ALL my Christmas presents are now slotted into my daily life and one of the most generous came through the letter box on Christmas Eve.
It cost £145.50; the fee for my television licence for 2013.
I didn’t pay for it. The British taxpayer did. At my age you get one free every year from TV Licensing in Bristol.
(This busy organisation occasionally confuses itself. It has been known to send peremptory letters to people like me asking why we have not paid up to renew our licences on due date and were we now watching TV illegally as other bad citizens did. Oh what fun we had writing back to tell them, with some asperity, where they had gone wrong. They didn’t reply).
The letter with my new licence was signed by TV Licensing’s operations director, Alison Roberts. She told me I had to report any change of address which might crop up during the licence year. Delicately she forbore to tell me how I should let her know if I had died during the year and didn’t know my new address.This led me, on the morning of Boxing Day, after a rip-roaring Christmas Day at the home of friends, to wonder if my death was actually nigh. My host has a taste for fine vintages and he is always generous with his cellar. There had also been Christmas presents and one of mine was a book called ‘1001 Wines You Must Try Before You Die.’
This presents a worthy challenge for a man who likes good wine. I also like, having the palate of a peasant, cheap wine. But the book is inviting me to keep it at my elbow while raising the latter in order to improve my taste.
The trouble is that 1001 wines is a lot. As I don’t know when I’m going to die how quickly do I have to hose it all down within what I must call the deadline, and if I do this too quickly will it bring my death closer than might have been so that I don’t manage to stay what I must call the whole wine course?
There is a fine temporal balancing act to be performed here, not easy when one is awash with fine wines.
My last gift turned up, unexpectedly, on Boxing Day. It was not intended to be a Christmas present. It was more in the nature of a humanitarian act of kindness. I was at a drinks party at the house of other friends who take a close interest in my welfare. My hostess thinks there is a Spartan regime at the bijou residence which might result in my not being fed properly.
As I was taking leave of her she presented me with the mortal remains of her Christmas Day turkey saying this should me give a sound dietary supplement. It had been a big turkey and she had wrapped it up in Christmas paper and placed it in a Shoprite bag for easy transportation.
It would have been churlish of me to suspect that she had seen me as an easy way of getting rid of the damn thing and I took it away into the dusk of early evening.
I couldn’t tell her to stuff it now could I?
• I HAVE been told by an important Douglas businessman – I won’t name him in case he’s wrong – that official moves are being made to persuade undertakers to drive their hearses a little slower in funeral processions in order to prevent traffic congestion.
The quick and the dead?
• BUILDING work at Broadcasting House has closed the ground floor toilets temporarily. Now they are open again and I am delighted to see that the work did not result in the removal of the old sign saying: ‘Please don’t throw paper hand towels down the toilet. Use the bin provided.’
It’s still not big enough.
THIS week’s Karl Campbell Manx crossword clue is: Loud gas explosion in island capital (7) – DOUGLAS (publication not known)