Category: Christmas & New Year

Pantos and Parties

Storm Darragh barrelling across angry skies couldn’t keep us from our annual panto and party pre-Christmas pilgrimage to The Smoke. The London Palladium pantomime this year is Robin Hood, starring the outrageous queen of high and low camp, Julian Clary, and his usual cast of merrie men and women. The vocal act is Jane McDonald – every pensioner’s favourite cruise-line crooner – as Maid Marion. And the likely lass from Yorkshire can really belt out a tune. Lavish, filthy and with a plot as flimsy as a Christmas twig, the show is a belly-laugh sacrament that’s become a firm festive fixture for these two village people.

The gusty winds and horizontal rain drove us into various watering holes to dry off and warm up. Everywhere was rammed. But even these two old merry men don’t drink before midday, so we spent one morning wandering around the splendid Museum of Science, one of the holy trinity of world-class museums along Exhibition Road in South Kensington – the V&A and the Natural History Museum being the other two must-sees. Like the pubs, the various galleries were rammed, not with dripping trippers but with wide-eyed kiddies in backpacks and waterproofs. It’s a fascinating place to spend a few hours, whatever the weather.

We also had the good fortune to catch up with family for much-missed hot gossip and to meet the latest editions to the clan – twin girls. And gorgeous they are too! It made these two old festive fairies very proud great uncles.

Sinderella

We missed Big Dick and His Pussy, last year’s mucky offering from the Adult Panto team, so we were determined to see Sinderella, their very naughty-but-nice interpretation of the classic rags to royalty tale we all know so well. It was a strictly gays’ and girls’ night for our foursome at Norwich’s Maddermarket Theatre, with husbands left behind to look after the sprogs. Giving a whole new meaning to that well-trod panto phrase ‘he’s behind you’, it was a non-stop, X-rated, utterly unbridled, cross-dressed, nudge-nudge, wink-wink glitterfest of smut and filth which left no profanity unsaid or hole barred. We loved it.

Just one more show to go – Treasure Island from the Loddon Players, our much-loved local am dram company – and then it’s curtains for panto season for another year.

New Year, New Life, New Hope

During Twixmas, one of our many nephews asked his long-term partner to marry him. His proposal was made at a surprise engagement do in London. Was he wise or foolhardy to drop to one knee in front of his nearest and dearest, ring in hand? Will she? Won’t she? Well, she burst into happy tears and said yes so there’s the answer. Relief all round to the sound of chinking and cheers. With tension eased, the party got into full swing. The young ‘uns kept their old gay uncles well-oiled with plonk and Jagerbombs. We must have looked like a pair of old drunken dowagers propped up in the corner.

We also found out that our soon-to-be niece-in-law is heavy with twins. They already have one toddler – fredelicious Freddy – so three will soon become five.

New year, new life, new hope.

I’ll leave you with London’s epic New Year’s Eve fireworks, a spectacular light show to celebrate ‘a city for all’ with a nod to some of the more positive events of 2023, including the 10th anniversary of the legalisation of same-sex marriage in England and Wales. Amen to that.

Top of the Pansy Pops 2023

Looking around at our troubled and troubling world, 2023 hasn’t exactly been the best of years – precious little hope and definitely no glory. Despite the doom and gloom, for the most part village life has remained tranquil and quietly satisfying, with the pansies erect and un-wilted. We know how lucky we are. This year’s crop of top pansy posts reflects this theme and has a distinctly personal and domestic feel with splash and crash, a Turkish dilly-dally, a hungry pot plant and a little slice of Essex chucked into the mix. For some unknown reason, July saw a surge in interest. And then there was the old post about our coffin hatch, which suddenly took off in November. Who knows why? It’s a mystery.

Here’s wishing for a little peace in 2024.

John Garner 1967-2003: Twenty Years On

I looked around the tidy cemetery. It was serenely silent except for the sound of birdsong and the trickle of water from the mouths of the dolphins in their petrified embrace. It calmed me. I sat on the bench and inserted the earphones of the MP3 player, already cued for the moment. I pressed play,…

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From Tossers to Flonkers

We’ve become part-time groupies for our local village bowls team. To the uninitiated, bowls is a traditional sport beloved of the grey herd in which the objective is to roll weighted balls along a green so that they stop close to a smaller ball at the other end – closest wins. A variant of French boules, the…

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Battle of Water-loo

We returned from our nostalgic dalliance in Dalyan to water trickling down our dining room wall. Okay, it’s a bit of a stretch to call it an actual dining room. It’s more of a dining area. We quickly traced the leak to our bathroom, shut off the stopcock and summoned an emergency plumber. Nice young…

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Dallying in Dalyan

It’s been a quarter of a century since I last visited Dalyan on Turkey’s pine-clad south-west coast. Back in the day, it was a sleepy village on a dreamy, reed-lined river stuffed with turtles. I’d been told that Dalyan had since grown into a full-on resort stuffed with young Russians avoiding the call-up. As they…

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Home Alone Day 2

The definition of boredom is cleaning out the bathroom extractor fan with an old toothbrush. Let’s face it, there’s only so much knick-knack dusting a boy can do when home alone. But I’m not yet ready for a meagre diet of daytime TV for the sofa-bound brain-dead – all idle chit-chat from nobodies about nothing.…

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Bloody-Minded Brits

I’ve always had a fu*k ’em attitude to authority, particularly the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrites. You know the kind of thing: politicians preaching ‘family values’ while knocking off their secretaries on the side or hellfire priests touching up the altar boys in the vestry. I’m glad to say that sheer bloody-mindedness is a glorious national trait. And…

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Echo Youth Theatre Presents Little Shop of Horrors

We had a little taste of Echo Youth Theatre’s Little Shop of Horrors at the Maddermarket’s recent charity gig and thought, yep, that’s right up our alley. The quirky musical comedy features Skid Row florist Seymour in a kinda horticultural ménage à trois with co-worker Audrey and Audrey 2, his pet pot plant with an…

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Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Liam is away visiting an old friend from his wayward early years as a young gay about town. They worked and played together when Liam did a proper job with a pension attached. It’s the first time I’ve been home alone since we moved to the village over three years ago. Liam left to catch…

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Road to Nowhere

We binned the car in 2014 so, unsurprisingly, good public transport is important to us. That’s why we chose a village close to Norwich with a decent bus service – regular and reliable. And Norwich has fast and frequent train services to London for our big city fixes and family stuff. All in all, it…

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The Only Way is Essex

Essex, the home county to the east of London, has the reputation of being, well, a bit chavvy. But there’s more to Essex than big hair, gaudy bling, fake tans, assisted tits and impossibly white tombstone teeth – and that’s just the men. Beyond the faceless towns of the commuter belt, Essex is a green…

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Bring Out Your Dead

Before the miracle of modern medicine and universal healthcare, life for most was plagued by illness or the fear of it. People croaked in their beds from mundane diseases that today we pop a pill for. Many a cottage stairwell was too narrow for a coffin so some featured a trap door between floors called…

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The Kindness of Strangers

I was surfing through Nextdoor, the local neighbourhood app, and happened upon this message from a resident of the nearby town of Beccles…

Hi everyone, during the pandemic my son put a large sign in my window saying ‘please wave to me’. I am a paraplegic and sit near the window often. The response was phenomenal and I had flowers left on the doorstep and even chocolates through the letterbox. A lot of the same people still wave to me every time they pass and I wanted you all to know that there are lovely people in our community for whom I am very grateful and just how much a wave really cheers me up. Thank you and please don’t stop. I hope I can pay forward to others. I hope you have a happy holiday. Thank you, thank you and thank you again.

Now and again I see or read something that restores my faith in humanity. This was such a time.

Wishing everyone peace and goodwill, whatever Christmas means to you. I’ll leave you with a few random festive images which got me in the festive mood.

  • Festive Feet
  • Stuck Santa
  • A Jolly Cottage Christmas
  • Loddon Christmas Tree
  • Norwich at Christmas
  • Carnaby Street Christmas Lights
  • Half-Way to Heaven
  • Broadwick Soho
  • Festive Blooms

Peter Pan, Absolutely Fabulous

It’s Christmas so it must be pantomime time, and panto doesn’t get any more lavish and camp than the annual festive frolic at the London Palladium. Each year the show just gets bigger and better, brasher and trashier, cross-dressed in glitter, sequins and smut. Once again, all our senses were assaulted; the perfect antidote to the drizzle of a dull December and a darkening world.

This year’s extravaganza is a panto mainstay – the evergreen Peter Pan, but not quite as Disney, or indeed JM Barrie, imagined it. Starring Ab Fab’s Jennifer Saunders as Captain Hook and the matchless Julian Clary mincing on as Seaman Smee, the cast also includes Palladium regulars Paul Zerdin, Nigel Havers, Gary Wilmot, and the simply wonderful Rob Madge as Fairy Tink who made us laugh and cry in his autobiographic tale My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?).

This year’s offering struck a more poignant note, dedicated as it was to the late Paul O’Grady, who sparred with Julian Clary on the Palladium stage a number of times as his alter-ego, Lily Savage.

Naturally, Julian steals every scene he’s in with one outrageous costume after another and all the best gags – a tsunami of filth. Absolutely fabulous.

Director’s Cut

I’m off-air while Liam and I are perking our pansies on Ithaca. Thankfully, Odysseus’ fabled isle has escaped the terrible wildfires that have torched Southern Europe – and now Hawaii and Tenerife – and brought destruction and misery to many, and death to some. Let’s not kid ourselves, the future’s buggered. Our next-door neighbour and his partner were caught up in the devastating firestorms that hit Rhodes last month and were forced to flee their hotel to sleep in a school playground. They made it back in one piece, I’m pleased to say.

So while we’re here…

…I’ve chosen some random photos that didn’t make the grade, blog-wise, during the past year and ended up on the cutting room floor.

And this is my personal favourite, spotted on the underside of a loo-seat lid on a train to London. It brightened up a dull journey. Who doesn’t appreciate a little toilet humour?

Snotty Jack

According to those in the know, as most of us took precautions during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic – social distancing, mask-wearing, hand-washing and all that jazz – we didn’t build up enough immunity from all the usual respiratory viruses that spread like the Black Death at this time of year. When Liam and I did finally succumb to COVID, we were vaxed to the max, so the result was a very mild affliction. And being the wrong side of 50, seasonal flu is kept at arm’s length by annual jabs.

But then came the worst of winter colds to shatter our complacency and bring us to our knees. Starting late Christmas Day and lasting well into January, we coughed, sneezed and spluttered our way through the festivities. Days of snot were coupled with nights of hacking. It was tiring and tiresome. It got so loud, you could hear us in the next village. For days I sounded like I was on forty a day and at one point I completely lost my voice. Many would see my involuntary vow of silence as a blessing. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, apparently. We drank through it.

Jack and the Beanstalk

The weather outside is dull and drizzly so it must be pantomime season, just the thing to chase away those winter blues. Panto is a centuries-old theatrical tradition which has evolved into a totally OTT cross-dressing, saucy song and dance piss-take loosely based on a fairy tale, fable or folklore. Kids love it and, for many, it’s their first taste of live theatre. Grown-ups love it too, catching the ripe gags that fly over the heads of the little ‘uns. Often a little bit naff, Panto is always great fun. And it’s profitable, keeping many a local theatre in the black for the rest of the year.

We’ve done two pantos this season – both versions of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. The first beanfeast was at the glorious London Palladium starring the incomparable Julian Clary as the Spirit of the Beans, brought up the rear by a host of top notch familiar faces. The Palladium gig is the annual headliner, panto-wise – getting the full-on West End treatment with no sequin spared. Julian stole every scene with one outrageous costume after another and all the best lines. It was a glorious belly-laugh of the lewd, the crude and the rude. All in the best possible taste – not.

The second interpretation, at the Fisher Theatre in nearby Bungay, was a more modest affair. It was surprisingly good; a few missteps, the odd fluffed line and an emergency stand in due to illness but that’s par for the course in amdram-land. None of that mattered, especially to the army of kiddies in the audience who lapped up every silly joke and every slapstick moment. Great fun for all the family in a cute local theatre with a fab little bar attached. Wonderful.

Like a Million Party Poppers

Last year New Year’s Eve pyrotechnics were all big bangs but no punters. The pandemic saw to that. This year, punters were back in force, lining the banks of the Thames. To mark their return, London Mayor Sadiq Khan put on a show of shock and awe. There were nods to various events from 2022 – the lionesses’ historic win in the Euros, fifty years of London Pride, standing tall with Ukraine and, of course, remembering Her Maj. The sky exploded like a million party poppers, a spectacular musical extravaganza to celebrate London’s extraordinary diversity and strong sense of inclusion – a city for all – and it was a marvellous sight to behold.