Father in Law joined us last night in a low-key, non-Champagne reserves-draining party for New Year. Wife and I were talking about the famed event, and established that between us with a combined age of 70+, we’ve had about five good New Year’s Eves: and so this one was a very low key affair – a buffet, some MIGHTY Chateauneuf du Pape that “the children” had bought me for Christmas, and some goddawful telly.
Actually, the telly wasn’t goddawful at all, or at least, it wasn’t to begin with. We watched the incredibly funny, incredibly well-performed “Meet the Fockers”, with Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman being particularly outstanding.
It was only when we got towards the witching hour that the quality nose-dived. Jools Holland’s “Hootenany” was a horrifying spectacle: it was like watching “Supermarket Sweep” in an ASDA stocked with available celebrities (and some of them – Annie Lennox, The Ting Tings, Dizzee Rascal – WERE celebrities; some (including the excruciatingly unfunny Al Murray, who did nothing but repeat “Hootenany” in a variety of equally unamusing inflections and voices a good twenty times, whenever asked a question) resolutely were not), between whom the hideously ingratiating Holland skittered asking inane questions, sewing it all into a threadbare and unconvincing patchwork quilt of chat and performances. The alternative was Elton John, live from the O2 arena.
Now, I don’t like the toupee’d, gap-toothed little dumpling any more than the next sane individual – but we did like the guests he had on (Alexandra Burke and Will Young) – and Wife had a semi-professional interest in watching the concert, that had been designed by David LaChapelle. Oh – and we had watched (from between our fingers) about twenty minutes of the Shitenanny, so we were ready for a change.
However, from the minute that he strode onto the stage, dressed (very convincingly) as Tweedledum, we knew it wasn’t for us. And so, we did the unthinkable: we talked to each other – and it was at this point that it was revealed beyond any shadow of a doubt that Father-in-Law is a Time Lord. My evidence is simple: there is no other explanation for the amount of stuff that he manages to read and do, UNLESS he can travel through time and space. This is a man who (although admittedly twice my age) seems to have read ten times as much as me, and does five times as much. This is a man who, on seeing a production of “Hamlet” with me, compared it not just to the ones that we had seen together (some of which I had forgotten completely), but to those that he had seen in his sixty plus years of theatre-going: ending with the baffling pronouncement “I CANNOT remember who played Osric in Gielgud’s production…. Oh, my memory is so terrible.” (this on the back of his having been able to enumerate every member of the cast, down to the Gravedigger, and (quite often) furnishing me with details of how the Spear Carriers’ careers later went stellar.
I’ve often remarked to Wife that if I was ever brought in for Police questioning, I would be absolutely buggered (not literally – although one does hear all sorts of things), because I could never a question such as “What were you doing Tuesday last?” with any degree of confidence – so you can imagine how this display of “Marvello the Memory Man” makes me feel… AND he gets to go in the TARDIS.
Anyway, Happy 2009 to all of you – I hope it is better than 2008 has been and brings you all the happiness and love you hope for.
Eiljert Gabbles On 