The Frumplingtons

Bah humbug! Not only does Christmas start earlier every year; it now doesn’t finish until near the end of January.

There was a KitKat advert on Channel 5 this evening. The ad featured Santa Claus taking the obligatory KitKat break after delivering his parcels. Nothing wrong with the ad itself. But the timing seemed wrong to us. Uncomfortable, even. I mean, it is almost a month after Christmas, and seeing adverts that belong properly only in December makes us feel as if someone is trying to pull us back into the past. And it is somewhere we really do not want to go.

It’s not just Channel 5 that are playing these curious temporal games. Our telly listings magazine is doing it too. We always buy the enigmatically-titled (and dead cheap) What’s On TV. (”Value packed 42p”, available at all good newsagents. Probably available at most bad newsagents as well.)

In the current edition, chock-full of all the soap trivia you’ll ever need, there is a full-page ad for something called “Thomas Kinkade’s Village Christmas”. This has to be seen to be believed: it is a collection of illuminated ceramic sculptures (’the cottages actually light up!’) and includes Santa’s Workshop Toys and other delights of the festive season.

This, I should point out, is being advertised in a magazine which is dated ‘week commencing 13th January’.

We usually buy the next week’s listings mag well in advance. (We get great pleasure both from marking out forthcoming televisual treats with a red marker pen, and from adding moustaches and beards to all photos of Ant and Dec.) So we already have next week’s What’s On TV in our possession.

Next week’s magazine is dated ‘week commencing 20th January’.

And on page 33, you will find another full-page advert. This one invites readers to ‘Have a Blue Christmas with the…First-Ever Elvis Presley Illuminated Porcelain Tree’. This wonderful item, we are promised, ‘rotates and plays the Elvis hit “Blue Christmas”‘.

Now, I’m not criticising any of the aforementioned items. But I am amazed that Christmas ads are still being published and transmitted almost a whole month after Christmas Day itself. And surely a lot of these ads must have been scheduled well in advance, so you have to wonder whether anyone has really given any serious thought to the likely readers’ and viewers’ reactions. Because, the way we see it, it doesn’t look as if they have.

Maybe it’s just us being curmudgeonly. But frankly, we’ve had enough of the Season of Goodwill by now. (There certainly doesn’t seem to be much festive cheer left in that Big Brother house, does there?)

And in any case, it won’t be long before the Easter eggs are on sale in the High Street.

Please, let’s not have an Easter/Christmas overlap. I don’t think we could stand it.

Chris

There comes a time in the life of every rock band when individual members go off and pursue solo projects. Naturally, people wonder if the original group is about to split up. And management and record company alike are always quick to scotch such rumours.

If televised gardening is, as some say, the new rock ‘n’ roll, then BBC Gardeners’ World must be the new Led Zep. Well, as far as I know, Gardeners’ World is certainly not splitting up; it should be back later this year. But some of the bandmates have been doing their own thing recently… READ MORE >>

Chinese snooker star, Ding Junhui scored a 147 maximum break over the weekend. But it was John Virgo’s commentary that really held my attention. Even when Ding was within a whisker of getting the 147, all Virgo could do, it seemed, was whitter on about Ding’s having overshot the last red, or whatever other error he had made.

Of course, if Ding was less than ideally positioned on some of the balls, Virgo was quite right to say so. His commentary provides an invaluable insight into the game, especially for non-players like me. And the fact that Ding was able to extricate himself from several awkward situations just emphasises how skilful he is.

Now, first things first: I like John Virgo and his dry sense of humour, and I was a big fan of that Big Break thing that he used to present with comic Jim Davidson.

The fact remains, however, that Mancunian Virgo , one of the original members of indie outfit The Salford Jets, can sometimes sound a bit pessimistic, even if that isn’t his intention. For a bit of fun, I decided to apply my own version of the John Virgo commentary style to a couple of historical events:

The Titanic

“Well, Clive, I’m convinced the Captain must have had a bad contact on that iceberg. He’ll need to apply a lot more side on his next shot if he wants to avoid the in-off.”

The Moon Landings

“Oh dear me! Armstrong’s positioning could have been better, that’s for certain. He’s got a terrible angle on the Moon and it’s difficult to see where he’s going to land now.”

The real John Virgo is no doubt even more amusing than my send-up (but then, how hard can that be?). And if you want to find out for yourself, you can hire John Virgo as an after-dinner speaker. Well, JV, if you’re reading this, we’re having chips tonight. So, if we can rustle up a few hundred quid from down the back of the sofa, we’ll give you a tinkle about 7 o’clock when we’ve done the washing up. See you later!

Chris

In this country, it is traditional to take down your Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night. Failure to follow this custom may mean that you will attract bad luck to your home.

Twelfth Night, in case you were wondering, is the evening of the 5th January.

So it was rather worrying, when we were in town this morning, to see Lincoln town centre’s Christmas lights all still in place two weeks into January. And no sign of anyone even thinking about taking them down.

If tradition is to be believed, this can mean only one thing:

We’re all doomed!

Chris

Can you tell what it is yet?

This strange shape in the pavement caught my attention as we made our way to town this morning. We think it was formed from a leftover gobbet of melted tar.

It’s like one of those Rorschachs tests, isn’t it?

My first thought was that it looked like a kangaroo. But was that because I saw what I thought was its long roo-like tail? Or because, as I later recalled, I had heard someone briefly mention kangaroos on the radio at breakfast time? Even so, I remain convinced that it still has definite kangaroo qualities. I can see it bouncing along, wearing (don’t laugh, I’m quite serious about this) a pair of boxing gloves.

Maybe it’s a wallaby though.

Or a joey?

What do you think?

Maybe I should watch where I’m going instead. Might bump into fewer lamp posts that way.

Chris

The World Professional Darts Championships have been on telly all week. It’s our kind of sport: not too much running about. And there’s a real fun atmosphere about the Lakeside venue. It’s a lot more relaxed than snooker. Players have their own special walk-on music. One dartist, a Dutchman called Niels de Ruiter, came on to the tune of Enter Sandman, by Metallica. Niels was giving the crowd the popular devil horns gesture beloved of rock stars. And he also treated us to a display of his abilities on air guitar. And quite appropriately, as the sandman is supposed to send you to sleep, Niels’ opponent, ultra-ponytailed, goateed Aussie, Simon Whitlock, promptly fell into a trance shortly afterwards, and lost.

Darts is full of quirky characters. One of the best-known is Bobby George. If you ever meet him, make sure you’re wearing sunglasses: the self-styled ‘Bobby Dazzler’ has got more gold than Ratner’s. And he wears it all at once! If it catches the light it’s gotta be like looking straight at the sun: don’t do it. I reckon, if the world economy ever goes back onto the gold standard, Bobby George could take over as boss at the Bank of England.

Later this evening, Martin ‘Wolfie’ Adams is set to play Ted ‘The Count’ Hankey. Half the audience will be dressed as Wolf Man, and the other half as Dracula, Adams said in an interview earlier today. (You see? With the best will in the world, I can’t see snooker getting quite this relaxed: ‘Stephen “Wolf Man” Hendry‘, anyone?)

The funniest thing though, has to be watching the players actually throwing their darts. We have identified a few things to look out for when they are ‘at the oche’.

The Goldfish — The player’s mouth forms a perfectly circular ‘O’ shape as the facial muscles contract with the effort of making a precise shot.

The Clench — This time the face muscles tighten up. Imagine a 5-year-old refusing to eat its greens. The mouth is clamped shut and though they remain seated, they do all they can to avoid Mother pretending the incoming fork is an aeroplane. Same thing with darts players, except without the broccoli.

The Steely-Eyed Stare — Simon Whitlock (mentioned earlier) is a master of this technique. He seems to be staring off into the far distance in a quite unnerving manner. I swear if that Spritney Beers jumped in front of him, he’d still see nothing but the dartboard. Now that’s what I call being ‘in the zone’.

So, if we enjoy darts so much, I guess you want to know if we play. Well, I tried it once and ended up with a huge bill from an irate landlord for replastering work. And Shana? Well, she would, but she just can’t get any insurance.

In any case, it’s probably safer that way.

Chris

Note: Our best Get Well wishes go out to darts legend Andy Fordham who was taken ill at Lakeside earlier this week.

We have invented a new sport. We call it Spatula Badminton. And it all started as something to do while we were waiting for our lunch. Ever the resourceful types, and used to making our own fun (not for us such modern luxuries as ZX Spectrum games) we hastily put together what you could call our ‘kit’ from simple household items. Our ball was a 6 inch offcut of wide gauge brown adhesive tape. And instead of racquets we used spatulas (hence the name of our game). We might not be terribly wealthy, but we are nevertheless a two-spatula household. So Shana had the metal spatula. And I had the black plastic one with the green handle; the one I bought from Wilko’s nigh on a decade ago; the one with the loose end, which, if you are using it to swat wasps, tends to fly off a bit too easily for my liking. (Shana, if you’re reading this, I made that bit up about the wasps.)

The badminton court was our 10 foot by 10 foot kitchen.

This was never going to be an easy game…

Match report

I chose to serve first and immediately missed the ball. Shana dissolved into a fit of the giggles and I decided to take advantage by launching my second serve with no prior warning. Shana has what is sometimes called ‘an eye for the main chance’ and managed to return serve with a vicious lob. Incidentally, in the original draft for this post I mistyped this as a ‘viscous’ lob. Either way, I now found myself in a sticky situation, as the ball had landed in the hallway and I now had to double up as apprentice ball boy and retrieve the ball.

My next serve was easily on target. Shana had no chance to hit it back and it landed square behind our deluxe litter bin in the corner. “Just like Pistol Pete, aren’t I?” I said. Shana muttered something unintelligible and probably unrepeatable and plucked the ball out of the corner.

There followed a brief interval, during which Shana put her cheese toasties under the grill. Proper players would at this point be mopping themselves with towels and sipping their preferred brand of ’sports drink’. This usually means things like Lucozade but could, I think, possibly be stretched to include Carling Black Label. Surely that too is a sports drink? After all, Carling do sponsor football’s Premier League, don’t they?

After the break I suggested painting a line down the centre of the kitchen floor to make it look more like a real badminton court, but my ideas were pooh-poohed, so we continued with the game instead.

Immediately after my next serve, I ran halfway toward Shana, who promptly hit the ball half a mile past me, leaving me with no chance to hit it back. “Just thought I’d try a bit of that serve and volley stuff. Henman always runs to the net after serving,” I explained. “Yeah, and how often does he win?” retorted Shana. Touché, I thought. Or to be more accurate whilst keeping the sudden French theme going, merde!.

By this time, the smell of burning bread and cheese was becoming overwhelming and the game had to be abandoned. Next time we might try playing squash instead. Now, if only I can think of a way to stop the ball landing in the sink every time we hit it…

Chris

We’ve got mice.

No, not that sort of mice.

We were in Poundland the other day. Not shopping for anything in particular. Just admiring the gimcrack novelties on offer and generally soaking up the exotic bazaar atmosphere.

It didn’t work though. We opened our eyes and emerged from our reverie only to find that we were still in Lincoln. (Dang and double dang!)

By this time we had reached the pet toys section. You can probably guess the rest: I took a shine to a packet of three squeaky mice and we just had to buy them. They’re supposed to be for kittens to play with but you have to treat yourself every now and then, don’t you?

The mice are now all lined up on top of the computer monitor, watching me as I type. There is a fourth mouse that came with them. If you pull its tail and let it go, it runs round in a circle.

All we need now is a cat.

Chris

Appearing in the Classified Ads section of some of today’s evening papers:

For Sale

Full set cricket equipment ( bats, pads, whites, protective headgear etc)
Hardly used, very little wear
Suit amateur or school team
Good reason for sale.
o.i.r.o £200

Contact Andrew or Kevin any time after 6pm