New Year salutations

The season has passed merrily here at Mondale villas and the tide of 2008 has quickly embraced us, our resolutions (no midweek drinking, more and better running, no biscuits) have had to be postponed until our next round of American guests have departed on the 15th of January (no, don't worry, they don't even arrive until the 10th!) The mundane nature of many recent posts has not diminished my pleasure in blogging, indeed, life is agreeable, the wee hen will be one next week and both he and Frau Random Doubt snooze their well deserved snoozes as I sit on the sofa and write. Speaking of the little man's birthday, I had no idea until recently that he shares a birthday with Elvis Presley. Far better than his father who shares a birthday with Marti Pellow from Wet Wet Wet (they did the theme to 'Four weddings and a Funeral' as well as a lot of other dross). Just goes to show the brilliant insanity of a year ago.

This Christmas I followed a venerable family tradition and purchased a copy of the Christmas Radio Times. In the olden days we knew Christmas was coming when Dad came home and plonked the weighty tome upon the arm of the sofa. But now? The age of the internet and the dvd? Dont bother. We watched about three hours of tv over the course of the entire holiday. This had something to do with lots of socialising, some game playing (which degenerated into a corruption scandal not seen since the Trivial Pursuit crisis of 1988), cooking, looking after Hen, the odd walk and trips to Southwold to eat fish and chips. If we did turn on the telly it was only at the end of the day to catch the last fifteen minutes of some hilarious film about Tom Hanks being stuck in an airport or the lovable Mr Cruise fighting Martians. We did spend an hour or so crammed into my brother's living room (it's a nice size but there were 34 of us) to watch the Christmas day Doctor Who special. A cross between 'The Poseidon Adventure', 'Titanic' and 'Star Wars Episode IV'. Amusing but very, very cramped.



Having just bitched about the medium I must admit the following, the tv highlight had to beThe Railway Children. Sniff, I'd forgotten, sniff, what a wonderful, beautiful, just wonderful film, sniff, it was. It's on every single Christmas (or New Years Day) and I hadn't seen it in years. I managed to catch it with a grown up visitor who had never seen it (American). I didn't ask him and he didn't ask me but we were both welling up at the end. Apart from making grown men cry the film was very well made, acted, shot etc. Delightful.