Oh Heck .... Two Weeks To Go

Well, what a surprise it is to discover that I am Quite Behind With Things this Christmas. So unlike me...

We've got the tree, Glittery Mary and Bertram, and various other sparkly draperies about the place. We've now had two consecutive weekends of eating mince pies. Which is very slobbish behaviour, and is setting me up to want to hibernate a bit, watch rubbish films, that sort of thing. Not to clean the house or do lists, or any kind of silly rushing about.

In fact, apart from some fairly random, and not completely comprehensive, online purchasing of presents, I've been looking for more Marys online - wooden ones, that might smell of churches. Or even fabulous waxy, plastic ones, all the way from Argentina. They are apparently very In Demand for Christmas and going for £££. I blame the Treasures From Heaven programme Andrew Graham-Dixon, Love God of the Reliquary, did the other night http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012248j


           
                 


Yesterday, while I should have been Busy Doing Other Things,  Singing In The Rain was on tv. I was getting quite annoyed by the clipped, hurried way the lines are delivered, but ended up finding these adorable posters:

     

Turner And Marmite, All On The Telly

Oh the cultural highs I encounter these days... have just seen Michael McIntyre re-created out of toast and marmite. By a 21 year old art student. Roll on the next Turner Prize nominations...

Personally, I thought it was more like Peter Mandelson, but who am I to deny MM his moment in marmite?

And that led us nicely into hitting the toaster in the ad break, but our toast and marmite was for satisfying our suggested-to tastebuds and not for the cultural puzzlement of any mass Saturday night audience. Actually on the food front today I have been unusually inspired, and made savoury pancakes with chunky houmous and olives. Washed down afterwards with walnut cake. From a shop, not my own fair hands. But there was a certain harmony in the textures of said pancake-and-cake combination.

Going back to Turner, I watched the delectable Andrew Graham-Dixon, he of the slightly-Bryan-Ferry-coiffure-with-a-twist-of-Serge-Gainsbourg, doing National Trusty things last night. Very rock'n'roll, me. Watching some posh bloke (phwoarr) hovering old carpets. And on a Friday night 'n' all - how did it get to this? Anyways, the Turner bit of the show was the fact that the dusty carpet was at Petworth House in Sussex, where the racy aristocrats of the day collected Turner's paintings of landscapes. When to do so, AGD informed us, was considered avant-garde at the time, when all the other posh families were commissioning portraits of their chubby, rosy-cheeked selves.

And seeing as I'm wittering on about tv again, I am a little intrigued about the upcoming thing about celebs having a homeless person come to stay. Noble, and both parties will surely learn something about each other, and the celebs will momentarily become humbler people. But why is it only Justin out of Colin-and-Justin hosting the homeless person? Do C & J no longer feature as the tweedle-dum-tweedle-dee kind of duo on which they have built their career - house renovating, shrieking, cushion-arranging, tantrum-throwing... oh, and dancing? Is this Justin being Grown-Up and Serious? Does Colin also get to separately sneak in a homeless person later in the series? I think they've gone for the wrong angle with this programme - much more mileage if it was People Famous Mostly Just For Tarting Up Houses On The Telly doing the social-conscience bit. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, are you listening?

It's Gonna Be A Bright, Bright, Bright, Sunshiney Day

It is so definitely spring! Blogland is alive with it, and I took a shortcut yesterday from the World of Work and walked past The Posh Houses... buds, and catkins, and shoots galore in the gardens. I have a hankering to buy some freesias today; tulips are gorgeous but they don't have a scent. Freesias, which we always used to buy on the way to my grandma's, are deliciously scented. Hell, I might even buy a tiny car-type hoover so I can keep the floors Properly Clean. (Don't tell anyone, but the henry's been up on the top floor since the christmas tree nicked its spot...)

Of course, I am already overjoyed by this morning's news that Jedward will be doing eurovision for Ireland. And that Colin and Justin are going to be on Let's Dance for comic relief. Oh, the aching sides I can feel coming on in the weeks to come, and the finger poised on the button to dial-a-vote for them all...

Some more sunny-colourification came our way yesterday in the form of itv's May The Best House Win. A former male model, now head to foot in yellow in Margate, with not only his own nude photos  splashed over every wall in his kitchen but with permanent christmas decorations everywhere. He was quite endearing, but couldn't stop himself bitching at the magnolia clunch walls in the minimalist's house.

Moving a notch up the colour spectrum, Mary Portas of the Tangerine Hair was on the back of some norf london estate agents this week. She mocked the bed-head look of their star salesman and got him to realise that while west may be the new south in terms of house-orientation, taking a good look at a property before trying to flog it was a better way to do these things. There are probably many fashionista blogs, from which we may learn how to source Ms P's exotically-patterned hosiery, but in the meantime here's some stripey legs:

We also liked the way a few notes of Bela Lugosi's Dead were slipped into the Andrew Graham-Dixon piece on Westminster Abbey on Thursday's eye candy that was the Culture Show. That'll be 17p in royalties then....

Trashsparkle's Thursday Televisual Treats

Earlier tonight Trashsparkle was zonked - brain absolutely addled by the day's academic complexities, and so had to have a bit of a lie-down on the sofa. Flicked through LivingEtc, and found myself quite fancying a papier mache zebra for the lounge.

Revived by the tonic of an-approved-of-by-Gillian-McKeith raw carrot in time for the always-delightful It Takes Two. Finding it a bit hard to see exactly what botox Patsy Kensit has had, or it could just be the tv screen badly needs cleaning. Have a gut feeling it'll be Gavin doing the sad we're-leaving dancey bit at the end this weekend, though the poor lad seems to think he's still in with a chance now that he's worked out you need to do a bit of acting during the dancing. He 'fessed up the other evening to spending A LOT of time in front of the mirror - and I don't think Gavin knows about irony, the little lambkin that he is.

And then, joy of joy, it was a whole hour of Keef, with the god that is Andrew Graham-Dixon thrown in for extra eye candy. The Keef book has, naturally, been on the Christmas list for the past 2 weeks....

 ps Yesterday's indecisive day-off resulted in a chance find of a gorgeous G-Plan style 60s wooden armchair in a charity shop - I only went in for a cardigan!