Boxing Day- oh yes it is!

Boxing Day- oh yes it is! Pantomimes and more telly.

It's Boxing Day folks. Oh yes it is. Oh no it isn't. Oh please make up your mind. The indecision of it all. Yes, in all seriousness, it is Boxing Day and it is pantomime season or day. These are extraordinary times. Outside it feels like high summer and, I kid you not, it feels like July out there. It's time to give an airing to my beach shirt and shorts. Let me see now.  I've just smothered yet more sun factor 45 on me and are those wasps and bees I can see in the rosebushes or have those petunias come up a treat?  Hold on somebody's having a barbecue next door. I thought I could smell chicken burgers coming from somewhere. This is picnic weather. I'm sure those  tulips are in full bloom. Listen to those lawn mowers. Surely not the dulcet tones of the cuckoo. This is just surreal. Somebody wake me up. This isn't happening. And yet it is.

It's at times like this that the whole of Britain begins to believe the rumours of global warming are perfectly correct.  We saw the weather forecast last night and those isobars look distinctly promising. In fact I'm willing to bet that by New Year's Day we'll all be wearing those humorous T-shirts and basking in 100 degrees of sweltering, baking heat and hiding in the shade. Maybe we'll all converge on our wonderful seaside resorts and then tuck into a hundred ice-creams. Will somebody get those deckchairs?

On second thoughts it is still ever so slightly nippy and windy out there so it's time to batten down the hatches in case we get some turbulent storms from the continent or perhaps the Atlantic. Inevitably by late this afternoon darkness will fall like a silky black cloth and the whole fabric of the day will take on an entirely different complexion.

 It will feel like mid- night and by 4pm the afternoon will no longer hold the same kind of fascination as it might during the summer. There will be a distinct bleakness and gloominess relieved only by chinks of grey, fading light and tiny patches of blue sky. The clouds will turn a sumptuous shade of salmon and it may or may not rain. But none of us can really have any justifiable cause for complaint. What a December! If the rest of the winter is like this then I'll smile all the way to the first day of spring. It's picture post card weather and without any of that snow we may be privately dreading. Great stuff. But hey who cares it's winter. There's a cosy intimacy about being indoors, eating yesterday's turkey sandwiches and playing Scrabble again. Fantastic game Scrabble.


Meanwhile back here in Britain families are bracing themselves for the yearly pantomime when all of the children wrap up warmly in their coats and everybody becomes very cheerful and feels glad to be alive. And why ever not? You've got to enjoy the festivities haven't you? You can't beat a good pantomime. Boxing Day and pantomimes have been with us for almost as long as anybody can remember. They're designed for children exclusively but if mum and dad want to feel some kind of emotional attachment then there can be nothing wrong with a Boxing Day pantomime.

My pantomime days are now sadly over for the time being anyway. While our children were growing up, my wife and I used to take our kids on regular trips to the yearly pantomime. It was that staple diet of Aladdin, Dick Whittington, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty without fail. Pantomimes had all the trappings of good old fashioned entertainment and childish inoffensiveness. Occasionally it seemed to get quite fruity, naughty, salacious, full of mischievous characters and funny remarks. Then there were those sillly moments, the outrageous language, the double entendres and innocent innuendos.

But hey come on we loved Window Twankey dressed up like some ridiculous fancy dress party figure, a riot of ragged and tattered costumes, nonsensical and preposterous but gloriously bright and colourful. There were the evil characters lurking behind the good guys, Dick Whittington slapping his thighs with all the reckless abandon of somebody who doesn't feel pain and sing a long frivolity.

Anyway it's time to throw some more logs on the roaring log fire and sip that final glass of Christmas Day brandy. Time to put my feet up and hope that the happy Hammers can well and truly forget that 8-2 battering they took on Boxing Day 53 years ago. It's Swansea today at the Liberty Stadium. I think I'll try and close my eyes and hope for the best. Now where's my claret and blue scarf. I'm forever blowing bubbles!