I'm Dreading a Shite Christmas.

So, to recap:

1. Mrs Pither has buggered off and shacked up with someone else.
2. I am in the financial doo-doos up to my armpits and it looks as though the house could soon be repossessed.
3. The Cow and Carrot has announced 120 redundancies and there are whispers that I am going to be on the list in the New Year.
4. I am 48, unhealthy and going fucking nowhere.
5. The tenative relationship I had with a lovely sex of the opposite gender has just gone bosoms up - albeit with the best spelled and punctuated Dear John text I have ever had.
6. Christmas will now be a distinctly canine affair with just me, five dogs, a bacon sandwich and Steve McQueen (assuming THAT film is on again).

If anyone knows of a wealthy, unfeasibly large-breasted, morally casual woman, who is blind, has no-sense of smell, has a fetish for overweight, balding men, lives over an off-licence and has a Nottingham Forest season ticket then could they please put her in touch with me.

Happy Christmas.

All The Right Words But Not Necessarily In The Right Order

I've just realised when Christmas died for me.

It wasn't on Christmas morning 1968 when, as I slept and dreamt of Father Christmas making his big entrance, my granny made her big exit by slipping into a coma and dying at our house (I seem to recall we let her win pass the parcel that year and I had to have her brussel sprouts).
It wasn't even two years later when, as a 10-year-old, my brother thoughtfully told me that Father Christmas didn't actually exist.
It could have been when I became a teenager and, as all teenagers are, I was obsessed with myself and what was in "it" for me - but it wasn't.
It wasn't even when I came home from college in December 1981 for my first Christmas as a student, only to find that my entire family had upped sticks and moved to Devon and so I spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day sleeping in the back of a friend's Lada.

No, I've just watched a documentary on the fantastic double act which was Morecambe and Wise and it's made me realise that Christmas truly died for me on May 28, 1984 - when Eric died.
The greatest comedy double act EVER was, sadly, almost unknown outside Britain and the Commonwealth and so I apologise here and now to readers from elsewhere who have never heard of John Eric Bartholomew and Ernest Wiseman.
I had almost forgotten how much a part of Christmas Eric and Ernie were to all of us in Britain. Their Christmas show was THE highlight of the festivities - and it never failed to live up to expectations. Their final show attracted 28 million viewers - yes, HALF THE ENTIRE POPULATION - and that is a mark which will NEVER be even approached, let alone matched.

I loathe, despise and detest the celebrity culture which underlies Britain in the 21st Century. People just want to be famous and they don't care how they do it. The people who promote them don't care either. Talent is not even a consideration. Often, it is a drawback. Thanks to shite television and unimaginably shite newspapers, people who would otherwise just be ignored for their complete and utter lack of value to society are actually lauded and treated like gods for being famous for.......being famous. Metaphorically speaking, I treat them like dogs treat lampposts.
Having said that, I idolised Morecambe and Wise. In truth, I "loved" them. I didn't feel the need to stalk them. I didn't insist my hair was cut like theirs. I didn't pester my mother to buy me the latest outfits they had been seen wearing. I didn't demand Eric and Ernie endorsed goods - there weren't any, thank God. All the same, I loved them and they were REAL celebrities to me because they were something I knew I could never be - immensely, outrageously, brilliantly talented.
They made me laugh hard. They made me smile the moment I laid eyes on them. There was something enormously comforting about the pair of them. All was well with the world as long as they were around. They were very, very important to me and Christmas just wasn't Christmas without them.........then Eric went and died.
We all knew there could not and would not be any more Morecambe and Wise shows. One massive heart seizure had killed off the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. Christmas was officially over - for ever!! Although Ernie lived on until 1999, he seemed to the rest of us like the loneliest man on earth and there was nothing he could do to bring back the laughter to us.
To think, the critics hailed their TV debut with the savage words "The definition of television - the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise!" Wankers!! Those who can, do. Those who can't become critics.

I don't go big on nostalgia (insert "it's not what it used to be" gag here) but watching Eric and Ern today brought all the happy times back to me. Here's to the pair of them. I don't know where they are. All I do know is they are not in Grantham.

Reginald Scratchesit

I'm reminded today of that old gag...."What do you think of Dickens?"...."I don't know, I've never been to one."
I've never been one to waste the opportunity for a cheap chortle so I could just leave it at that - but it IS relevant. You see, I think I have turned into a Dickensian character.
Like many of Chaz's (Boz's?) characters, particularly those in A Christmas Carol, my lot this festive season has been, on the face of it, not been a happy one. There was the disastrous start which was Christmas Eve. I then woke on Christmas Day with a form of cholera which has confined me to my bed for long stretches and is only now just beginning to subside.
A lack of funds, a dying dog and a looming divorce had already led Mrs Pither and I to decide Christmas would be cancelled this year. As a result, there are no decorations up at The Towers, there is no tree, no presents, no turkey, no port, no plum pudding.........fuck all!
Now, as if to proverbially put the Aids-riddled fairy well and truly atop my woodworm-ravaged Christmas tree, Mrs Pither has gone back to work and will be heading off from there to her mother's in the frozen north - for five days! That leaves me and the chaps alone in Tinselless Town, probably on New Year's Eve as well, with almost nothing. Picture us huddled around the light of just one, dim candle for warmth with just three eggs and a pack of bacon a week past its sell-by date to sustain us.

Now, all of the above would, you might think, make me akin to a character in an EastEnders Christmas special, or someone in one of Leonard Cohen's cheery ditties, but no. You see, like so many of Dickens's heroes, I am in fact quite contented.

I am not starving to death. I am not dying of thirst. In fact, I am not dying in any way, other than the way in which we are all dying as the years roll by. My home is not being bombed and I do not risk being shot if I step outside. I am not cold. I am not exhausted. I am not languishing in some hellhole jail and I am not scared, totally alone or without hope. The truth of the matter is that the things I AM pale into insignificance alongside the things I AM NOT.

Bob Cratchit was of a similar mind. The poor bastard got only one day off a year, his youngest was a cripple, he lived in a shithole, his missus had a face like a smacked arse, he earned about fourpence every six years and the biggest feast he could rustle up amounted to a bag of nuts, three brussel sprouts, an old potato and a mug of Vimto................but he was happy! His happiness was down not to clinical insanity and a complete inability to realise how crappy life was but to his ability to realise just how lucky he was in comparison to some.

This sanctimonious load of holier-than-thou, saccharin-laden cobblers is being brought to you courtesy of encounters I have had over the last few days with several people - some in the flesh, some on the wireless, some on the Devil's Lantern.

Excuse the heavy irony here, but I've had it up to just above there with people complaining. If they've not been bleating on about how unhappy they are, how no-one loves them or how alone they feel in the world, they have been twining about how life is unfair and how they wanted to kill themselves because Sainsbury's had run out of family-sized chocolate logs!! FUCK OFF!! If I'd wanted to hear something bleating in my ear continually I'd have spent Christmas on a sheep farm! GET A FUCKING GRIP AND......AND.....AND.....WELL.......JUST CHEER UP, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!

"My girlfriend has left me, Reg."
"Good! She was a mad old trout. Think positive - now you can walk about the house in just your pants as much as you like."

"I feel lonely today, Reg."
"There's a reason for that. Everyone hates you! Why not just talk to the voices in your head?"

"I hardly got any presents."
"Here's one.....THWACK!!!"

"I feel really depressed, Reg."
"And by depressing me you are achieving what exactly?"

I realise some might accuse me of hypocrisy, Pither not being widely known as a little ray of sunshine. In my defence, I would say that my ire and, on occasions, my despondency, are always aimed at other people or things. I never say "pity poor me" or "I want your sympathy and love" because I am patently aware that no-one gives a shit! Primarily, however, I don't bleat about my lot because I CAN COPE! There IS always someone worse off than you (it's me!!)

So, here's to Dickens's newest creation.............Reginald Scratchesit. God bless us, each and every one!
(Self pity can go to Grantham).


(Master Scratchit may apparently have some awful spinal condition or have had a broomhandle shoved all the way up his arse but he is still happy as he shares a warming jug of Scruttocks Old Dirigible with the village child molester.)

P.S. Talking about creatures which never bemoan their lot, my Padfoot is doing remarkably well. He has, in fact, had a splendid Christmas! Friends have been bringing round the left-overs from their Christmas meals on a regular basis and so he has been tucking into turkey, beef, gammon and pork, among other things. He really is looking good, especially now the hair is growing back from his operation. Also, he is eating so well he has actually started to put weight back on!
He is so happy he has, once again, taken to play-fighting with his brother and sisters, gripping his dad's arm in his jaw when he gets excited and trundling around the house after both myself and Mrs P in case there are any more goodies to be had. Even his legs seem to have regained a lot of strength and he now hops in and out of the house with apparent ease. Hell, he can even jump onto the settee to sleep at night. He is doing very, very well.



We both know the cancer in his chest is likely to be inoperable, but it looks like he has a while left yet and, far from continuing to deteriorate, he is staging something of a fight back, however fleeting it might be. Hurrah!