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It is Advent which in the Today studio is a fretful time of year.
The saintly Ed is of course wholly preoccupied with determining the appropriate vestments for the season and has decided this year to follow the archaic tradition of Pope Innocent III by wearing black instead of the now more usual violet and his fretfulness was not assuaged by the cheap and rather remorseless ribbing from the Front Row aesthetes who'd popped over for a cream horn and macchiato and who lolled on the settees at the back - paradoxically - of the orangery chanting "Tu non es papabilis" and hooting in amusement at their cleverness.
This of course is unkind and unfair since the saintly Ed has no pretensions and certainly none to the papacy though he has indicated to friends that he would not stand in the way of his beatification at some later date though of course not standing at all is a pre-condition for that anyway but he showed great stoutness of spirit and carried on putting his dalmatic away for the season and carefully folding his chasuble without a sneer or suspicion of contempt and his mood lifted slightly when the UPS man arrived with the Holly and Berries Advent Wreath and Madonna set that he'd ordered off the internet for just $27.96 even though it was a day or two late.
Advent is also fretful for the more secular types like John, Jim, Carolyn and Sarah who have things on their mind of a more mundane stripe and to do with Christmas or Xmas or the holiday like thinking about buying things or putting up the decorations or working out what to cook and eat except for John who tends not to cook what he eats. Or even kill it sometimes.
The big debate for those of us who don't eat hominids or bury parts of them from time to time between the chrysanthemums in the Blue Peter garden is whether to make mince-pies or not this year and this is no idle question since the world lard shortage means Jim will have to be tasked with buying some off eBay and the thing is when Jim gets on eBay there's no knowing what might arrive a day or so later. How do you think we got the scale model of the church of San Martin Pinario in Santiago de Compostella made entirely out of Budweiser bottle tops?
Most of the programmes this week have been about sex. That is not true but a lot of your emails have been and it is all because of the newspaper review in Thursday's programme which contained a reference to the diary of Ilene Powell and which took the venerable Donaldson back to his youth so much so that his cravat trembled ever so slightly as he read Miss Powell's entry for Saturday Feb 7 1925 and especially the sketchy and ill-defined bit about "making love" on the roof garden. Sipping at a decaffeinated kaffe mit sahne afterwards Donaldson told us all about those heady days that were so gay and fancy-free and how ivveryone was always so hippy and it was champagne cocktails and dancing 'til dawn and quick runs to the coast in the Alvis where in those pre-antibiotic days it was possible to pick up a souvenir you simply couldn't shift. On Friday's programme however the etymologists Michael Quinion told us that we had got it all wrong and that it wasn't until 1984 that the phrase "making love" got the meaning it bears now and that the venerable Donaldson must have confused an awfully large number of young ladies back in 1925 which frankly should surprise no-one.
There was a lot about leadership however. On Tuesday, Bob Worcester and Viscount Tenby joined us to discuss the best PM while on Thursday Caroline Wyatt reported from Paris on the 200th anniversary celebrations - or lack of them - of Napoleon's coronation as Emperor. Many of you wanted to know the music that accompanied that report; there was more than one piece but the main one was of course Beethoven's Eroica symphony and given the venerable Donaldson's dreamy far-away look that day as he remembered long-past knee tremblers it's probably just as well he didn't try to read it out.
But the storm of the week has been over things like spelling and punctuation. Spelling when we discussed the new 91热爆 programme with Michael Gove and Chris Jolly and defeated them with a word even the venerable Donaldson would need a snorter or two to climb; floccipaucinilipilification was the word and it means "a completely made up word to get us out of a sticky corner at twenty five past eight". Punctuation when the email inbox creaked under the weight of missives asking for more commas in these newsletters.
So for everyone but especially Lady Macbeth and Markmyword and Ray Burke here are some commas.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I thank you.
Kevin
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