We need an urgent injection of joy
f you’ve got a dinner party lined up for this weekend, I’d like to emphasise that there is one – and only one – acceptable topic of conversation. No, not that. Or that. (OMG, are you mad? You can’t talk about that! You’ll all be flinging panna cotta at one another. And the results won’t be Priti. Oops. Sorry.)
Better stick to Paddington Bear. The new film in cinemas. The old film being shown on telly. The late Michael Bond’s newly discovered final tale. The much-loved old stories.
“How great is Hugh Bonneville? What’s there not to love about Sally Hawkins? I hear Hugh Grant is a revelation…” and so forth. Until some bright spark goes and ruins it all. “Hugh Grant… wasn’t he in Love Actually? And didn’t he play the prime
mini …”
Oh dear, did someone kill the mood? Take that as your cue to start clearing those plates pronto if you don’t want them smashed in a frenzy of Weltschmerz.
There isn’t an English word for “melancholy world-weariness” just yet, but here’s hoping we get one by the time March 2019 comes around, as we may need it.
I’m trying to keep my chin up, but we’re under siege, you see. Sexminster sleaze, the implosion of the Cabinet, the EU threatening to shake our money tree till every last guinea clatters to the ground. This week even Marks & Spencer wobbled like Boris Johnson on the back foot.
Is it any wonder critics are going on about Paddington 2 as though it were the best film ever made in the history of cinema?
This extraordinary hyperbole over a fictional foreign bear found homeless on a railway platform is justified because, right now, this hour and 43 minutes of charming whimsy is the only narrative that won’t give us a collective aneurysm.
Paddington 2 (be warned, snowflake students: may contain scenes of mild peril) is 21st-century panem et
circenses, a slanket to comfort our bruised psyche, a nostalgia-drenched tribute to a kinder Britain.
You remember those halcyon days, before we’d heard of the wretched Paradise Papers, before preposterous health-and-safety diktats hadn’t yet barred enterprising bears from working as window cleaners?
The new Paddington even has a nod to current affairs. This week, we learned that GPS in Britain see their patients for an average of nine minutes and 22 seconds. In Lima, Great Aunt Lucy’s appointments last 15 minutes. Hang on – that’s not good, is it?
It could, of course, be worse. At least our politicians, for all their, um, frailties, can be persuaded, nudged and bullied into resigning. President Donald Trump, on the other hand – who this week celebrated a first full year since his extraordinary election win – sees no shame in humiliating his own country in his efforts to get a deal with China, which he accused of “raping” the US economy during his not terribly presidential campaign.
Thank heavens we only have to worry about an NHS that spends £16 on packs of rubber gloves that should cost 35p, as waiting lists are set to soar to five million by 2021. It’s enough to make you want to…
But, oh, what’s that? Did someone mention Paddington? Ooh, he’s in the new M&S advert, don’t you know?
How cute. How astute. The high-street chain’s own chairman described it as having been “drifting, underfulfilling its customer promise” for more than 15 years. So spending big bucks on a movie tie-in seems less a choice, then, more of a bare necessity to start the pre-december tills jingling.
What we could all do with right now is the John Lewis Christmas advert to raise our spirits before we start our around-the-clock seasonal skivvy to make Christmas magical for everyone else. What’s that you say? The advert will be unveiled online today?
Well, not a moment too soon, as the women of Britain have quite enough sadness to be going on with.
Today is also Equal Pay Day, a heavily ironic designation for the date on which women effectively stop earning relative to men for the rest of the year.
There’s a 14.5 per cent gap between our salaries; we earn 85.5p for every £1 paid to a man. For the same graft (organising the yuletide bonhomie not included), we get nada, nuthin’, nichts from now until the New Year.
Is it any wonder, then, that our sainted dawn stalwart Sarah Montague is said to be leaving the Today programme after 17 years? While her colleague John Humphrys earns upwards of £600,000, she gets paid less than £150,000. In what universe is that justifiable or fair?
I’m not sure even a spanking first edition of Paddington Goes to St Paul’s, a final outing for the bear – due for publication next year – could make up for that differential.
Coincidentally, Tuesday sees a memorial service for Michael Bond in St Paul’s Cathedral. He died earlier this year at the age of 91, before he had the chance to watch Paddington 2, although he had been delighted by the first film.
I dimly remember I was, too – on DVD. This time, we’re off to the cinema for the full-body immersion: duffel coats, marmalade sandwiches, maybe even a battered hat.
I want to suspend reality, feel enchanted by his crazy ursine capers and leave the world outside. His adopted nation needs him to raise our spirits. Otherwise, I’m not sure how much longer I can Paddington bear it.