Matrimony, Christmas and a rant

I feel moved to use the medium of poetry to describe the keyest of recent developments:

Up on the Ridgeway, so it is said
Ben and his loved one got engaged to be wed.
Out in the open for everyone to see [1]
Ben said it in Swedish [2] and on one knee.
The ring belonged to Ben's mother-great-grand
She put up a struggle but we got it off her hand.

[1] i.e. a couple of circling red kites and anyone in Wantage with a really good telescope.
[2] Vill du gifta dig med mig?

At this point my poetic muse breaks free and runs gibbering to the hills but that's the gist of it. This news may introduce additional characters to this blog, who to spare their blushes will be referred to as Best Beloved and her 13-year-old son, the Boy.

The Boy was the first to be told the good news. As he thoughtfully shared with his mother, "I suppose you couldn't really say no, what with it being Christmas and all ..."

Christmas was spent enjoying the cuteness of my 3-year-old nephew and 9-month-old niece, and shuttling between various forms of sleeping accommodation, which depended on whether my sister's family was in residence or not. My parents have bought the second wing of their U-shaped house in the gradual quest for reunification of the building, and have no further territorial ambitions at present. The Sudetenland is now in the throes of severe redecoration but at least has heating, so we spent one night there, then two nights in the main house, then back to exile for a further three.

Christmas TV ...

1. Dr Who. Silly but fun. I wasn't encouraged by advance talk of killer Santas etc. but they downplayed the silliness to a just about acceptable level. It really sagged with David Tennant's non-stop monologuing holding several thousand xenocidal aliens in thrall (why couldn't one of them just shoot him? Hey? Why?) but apart from that ...

2. Rome. Or as my father calls it, Maximus Bonkus, though very little of that this time round. Just Titus Pullo suggesting that relationship counselling may not be his calling but a little anger management couldn't hurt.

3. Return of the Goodies. This should have been 1.5 hours of archive excellence, but deduct at least 30 minutes for talking heads explaining to us why it was funny. After five minutes of people banging on about the Funky Gibbon it was decreed that we should Turn Over to the Magic of Jesus. This proved to be unutterably ghastly, but thankfully it hit a commercial break and we turned back to the Goodies again. By now they had moved on to Kitten Kong and of course we were hooked, with only occasional talking heads popping up from time to time.

WHY DO THEY DO THIS? Did the original episodes have interrupting commentaries to explain the jokes we had just seen? Okay, the contributions of those who were involved are relevant - the three eponynous ones, plus John Cleese and others. But we don't need (say) Martin Freeman sharing his memories. If we ever need to know how Martin Freeman's career was affected by the Goodies in his childhood, that can surely wait until he gets a retrospective documentary on his own career in 20 years time.

Rant over, on with things. Happy New Year!