Boris’s festive cracker is no laughing matter
AND so roll on Christmas! The Government has thrown off its Scrooge mask; up to three households can get together with no upper limit on people and we’ll have five days to whoop it up from December 23 to 27. This follows the best part of nine months in which some families have hardly seen each other and now they will be thrown together non- stop. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, just about everything, actually. Is the Government insane? Christmas is a notoriously fractious time of the year under the best of circumstances, with families cooped up together, eating and drinking too much and ending up in furious tiffs over the Monopoly board which are, of course, a substitute for what is really making you mad.
You have spent the last year waiting for your husband to repair the grouting in the bathroom and goodness knows he’s had the time to do it and then the slacker gains a fortune from building on Mayfair, while you land in jail. It is the work of an instant to overturn the board and flounce out of the room, tripping over some mangled Christmas ornaments that the dog chewed earlier as you do so. And this, they think, will promote harmony and peace?
Then there are the annual rows over the stuffing, with huge controversy about whether it’s acceptable to use sourdough bread, and those that insist on doing so are no better than they ought to be and yes, that means you. Someone, somewhere, is bound to compare the roast potatoes unfavourably to those prepared by their late mother: expect a family rift that will last for decades. Your grandchildren ( you are 30) may patch it up one day, but don’t count on that happening soon. Someone else will burn the sprouts, your favourite, and everyone, including the family pets, will drink too much. No one will get the presents they really want.
YOU are streaming a thriller on Netflix that you had really been looking forward to seeing, given its famous twist: “Oh, that’s the one where the psychiatrist turns out to be a ghost,” someone will say as the titles begin to roll. And just as your nerves have stretched to breaking point carol singers will pipe up on the doorstep. It emerges they cannot hold a tune. And three families! What about the families with four grown- up children? Just how are you going to tell grandma that sorry, she’s persona non grata this year? And in some cases there will be highly political decisions to make: anyone hoping for an inheritance is extremely unlikely to choose to cause upset in that particular direction. Blood may be thicker than water but nothing beats a healthy bank account.
So well done Boris and Co. In the strangest year in living memory, they have arranged for quite the finale, but with the added fun that even the pubs won’t be open so there will be nowhere to escape. And bah humbug to you too!
A FEW weeks ago I wrote that Emma Corrin didn’t have a hope of recreating Princess Diana in The Crown: how wrong I was.
It’s uncanny: she has the slightly hunched shoulders of the young Lady Di, the voice, the mannerisms, that coy upward look down to a tee. At times I thought I was watching the real thing. The rest of it, mind you, is an absolute travesty, which had Michael Fagan breaking into the Queen’s bedroom so he could whinge to her about rising employment under Margaret Thatcher. Come off it.
There’s also a scene in which Camilla and Diana have lunch in a restaurant called Menage a Trois ( natch): “I like to share,” says Camilla. Diana thinks she’s talking about splitting the bill but we all know what lies ahead. The early series showed the Windsors as real human beings: this is not so much laying it on with a trowel as employing the services of a dumpster truck.