The Season of Goodwill!

And a very Happy New Year to you all!

Hope it's a million times better than 2018, which won't be difficult.

I've just struggled through Christmas, having caught my first and only cold of 2018, on Christmas Eve. Five days a of sweaty, sneezing misery and tissues everywhere, while overdosing on Poirot and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the telly... amongst other goodies.

I also watched Theresa May tell us all about Brexit being good for us, despite our continued love for Europe. I frowned a little at that, sneezed and channel-hopped, just in time to catch a British plane dropping a bouncing bomb in that epic -'The DamBusters'. Mmmmm. I moved on... to Richard Burton blowing up a boat full of Germans in 'The Heroes of Telemark'. Yes, Christmas really was here. The season of goodwill.

I needed a short rest. Just a short one, so I channel-hopped again. Charlton Heston jumped onto my screen. Ah, that's better. An epic, I thought. And starring a man who knows what to do with a gun! This one was called 'Khartoum' - the story of colonial Britain's heyday and the demise of General Gordon at the hands of the Mahdi and his devout followers. Excellent tragedy involving loads of Arabs being mown down by the thin red line. Britain at its best. And not shooting Germans this time, which was a refreshing change.

I had a mince pie, a glass of something nice and got a hot water bottle for my chest. Then back to the telly and... Michael Caine and Sean Connery wreaking havoc among the stormtroopers in a thing called 'A Bridge Too Far'.

I turned off and had a break. Only three days into the Christmas holidays and I've already seen over a thousand Germans blown up, shot, strangled, drowned or machine-gunned. This was Brexit with a vengeance.

A few days of more mayhem later, I flicked on to watch the New Year fireworks, which were as magnificent as always. The message was: London is open. London loves everyone - and this message was spoken in a variety of languages including German, Romanian and Polish. Very nice. I had another sneeze, had a croaky sing-along with Madness and then flicked over in time to catch Kirk Douglas strangle a stormtrooper in 'The Heroes of Telemark'. Again. They were showing the film again!

I punched the remote. Peter Ustinov appeared with his little grey cells on a boat on the Nile. Lovely. Perfect Christmas fodder. I fell asleep... and woke up to the sound of Harrison Ford blowing away a car full of Germans. We had moved on. Poirot had unmasked his killer and now it was Harrison Ford's turn. But this was an Indiana Jones thing, so killing Germans is sort of OK. It's not serious killing, because the Germans are not just evil, but really evil. Even the women have vicious fringes which are used in combat. Wipe them out, Indie!

Jeremy Corbyn was next, telling me that Britain deserved more and that relations with Europe would be much better under a Labour government. I sighed, coughed into a tissue and turned over. This time it was Clint Eastwood blowing away three evil-looking SS officers in 'Where Eagles Dare'. Britain certainly doing all right there and Anglo / US relations working perfectly.

I nearly forgot. There was Star Wars, as well. Thank goodness for some other baddies to kill. Not just... hang on a minute - let's not forget Harrison Ford zapping galactic stormtroopers. Not Germans this time, but they seem to march like them and are just as brutal and merciless!

And so the holidays came to an end and January 2nd arrived, which was a bit of a relief to be honest. I was slightly battle-fatigued and suffering a little from post-telly, stress disorder.

It'll be nice to get back to the usual rubbish on the telly, after this season of goodwill to all men (and women).