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The kids have three advent calendars EACH. Both sets of grandparents have given them ones with chocolates in and this year their Aunty Jill has got in on the action and given them Lego advent calendars (which are better than most of the actual Christmas presents I got as a child).
I don't want to come across as a grumpy 53 year-old-man who wouldn't look out of place in the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but that is what I am and these kids don't know they are born. In my day we were happy to get an advent calendar with only crappy Christmas Card style pictures of bells and holly behind the doors. And always with the nativity scene behind door 24. No fucking surprises, not chocolate and no toys. On Twitter other people wanted to outdo my outrage, saying they got the same advent calendar every year (I think this might have happened to us too, but who could tell? These things were all the same back then). Others had to share one calendar with a sibling, opening the odd or even numbers.
I don't think my outrage is with my kids for being so lucky, but just with myself for being so easily satisfied. Fuck it, I was excited to open the door every morning.
The only people who saw the potential for a profitable scam back then were candle makers, who realised they could flog a few unnecessary candles (and presumably cause a few house fires every year) by making advent candles. That you lit for an hour each day and then extinguished so you could light again the next day. Of course they knew that kids would not sit patiently and wait, so the things would burn down to nothing by day 3. But even if they didn't, they'd just sold a candle that no one actually needed and which was doing fuck all good for anyone. They must have felt like the kings of the Sting until Ian Cadbury and Jan Lego got in on the act.
And their smugness turned sour when they discovered that other people were managing to sell advent calendars to adults by putting alcohol or perfume or socks in them. When will this advent calendar escalation end? Is someone going to start realising they can include November in the countdown? Then October? Then the whole year? Will they make us look cheap if we're not getting a year long advent calendar with a different fist sized diamond behind every door. Will be need to convert our entire homes into advent calendars?
Or will they just be happy that they've turned this formerly almost cutting-edge comedian into someone railing against the changes that have happened to advent calendars in the last four to five decades?
Who remembers Spangles? Who remembers fucking Spangles? What have I become?
And the really good news is that your badge and Twitch subs in November amounted to almost £10,000 which is all going to Movember. Thanks for this incredible support.
I wrote another Peter Dibdin sketch today and made a start on two more. The one that worked suddenly started to flow out of me and went in quite an unexpected direction. But I think I like it. It's for the Christmas episode. I still need to work on next week's one. I think we'll be doing a few of these though. It's crazy we didn't do more with him in the mid-90s (I remember meeting Bob Mortimer back then- or did I read it in an interview?- who was quoting "You can't even drive" and loved the character). Maybe we can make something of him now. I've come up with a couple of new and significant character developments for him, which I think will give him legs (they aren't that I am literally giving him legs).
