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Oh the weather outside is frightful
Dec. 20th, 2010 11:59 amIf the good Doctor really wants to play Santa Claus this Christmas, perhaps he could materialise in the check-in hall at Heathrow and pile everyone into the TARDIS?
I think this might be the year that flying loses the last shreds of glamour it once possessed. On top of the Iceland eruption, it's truly been an annus horribilis for aviation. It is probably true that in the vastness of human suffering having your flight indefinitely cancelled and being trapped in a terminal building for three days is not as bad as having your eyes gouged out (a remark my family tend to make whenever someone like Kirstie Allsop on telly begins a statement with the words, 'There's nothing worse than...') But to be there with young children and no idea what is happening must truly be the pits.
Anyone who's ever had a less-than-ideal trip abroad will have experienced the desperation that can possess you as you reach the airport and the Shangri-La of home comes tantalisingly close. So, much as I pity the poor souls who can't fly out of the UK right now, spare a thought for those who can't get home. The thousands of international students, for example. They face a miserable festive season if things don't get sorted out soon. If you've a spare place around your table on Christmas Day because relatives are stuck elsewhere, it might be worth contacting the International Society of your local uni and offering hospitality to a student or two.
Is it really beyond the wit of the British people to get themselves organised and shame BA into making life a little more bearable for these people? I'm not suggesting the Sally Army abandons rough sleepers to their fate and moves their operations to Gatwick or Heathrow, but couldn't some newspaper launch a seasonal appeal for those who live nearby to offer exhausted would-be travellers a bed for the night, or for someone to get in there with hot food and some entertainment for the kiddies? Maybe even a few charging stations for people who can't speak with relatives because their phones ran out of battery hours ago? Am I right in thinking that in America some kind of grass-roots relief operation would have mobilised by now? Instead our compassion and resourcefulness seems to be as frozen as the planes glued to the tarmac.
I am so very, very grateful that I'm not going anywhere, that we have all we need for a wonderful Christmas, not least a family to be together with. Having to go out two or three times a day to adjust the lagging on the boiler condensor pipe and warm it up with a hairdryer is a small price to pay for such blessings.
I also have a feeling the Christmas Special might just turn out to be the point where I learn to love Eleven. I am so looking foward to an hour of escapist fun that doesn't angst about Gallifrey, poison the Doctor with radiation sickness or have him throw a tantrum because someone needs rescuing.
Here are some wise words from the wonderful Caitlin Moran:
But trying to work out which is the “best” of the two is pointless. The difference between the Who of Davies and the Who of Moffat is like the difference between Stephen Hawking explaining how rainbows are made — anthelion; the glory; blue light; red light; the rainbows on Saturn’s moon — and Judy Garland singing about being on the other side of one.
Both are beautiful. Both would move any human being to tears. Moffat’s season finale — Amy crying “I remember you! I remember you Raggedy Doctor!” in her wedding dress — was no less affecting than anything Davies has ever done, and that it came at the end of a plot in which the characters moved around in space time like a spirograph made it, if anything, more acute.
Plus, I fancy Rory.
Oh Caitlin, what happened to your shameless Tennant fangirling? Frailty, thy name is woman.
I think this might be the year that flying loses the last shreds of glamour it once possessed. On top of the Iceland eruption, it's truly been an annus horribilis for aviation. It is probably true that in the vastness of human suffering having your flight indefinitely cancelled and being trapped in a terminal building for three days is not as bad as having your eyes gouged out (a remark my family tend to make whenever someone like Kirstie Allsop on telly begins a statement with the words, 'There's nothing worse than...') But to be there with young children and no idea what is happening must truly be the pits.
Anyone who's ever had a less-than-ideal trip abroad will have experienced the desperation that can possess you as you reach the airport and the Shangri-La of home comes tantalisingly close. So, much as I pity the poor souls who can't fly out of the UK right now, spare a thought for those who can't get home. The thousands of international students, for example. They face a miserable festive season if things don't get sorted out soon. If you've a spare place around your table on Christmas Day because relatives are stuck elsewhere, it might be worth contacting the International Society of your local uni and offering hospitality to a student or two.
Is it really beyond the wit of the British people to get themselves organised and shame BA into making life a little more bearable for these people? I'm not suggesting the Sally Army abandons rough sleepers to their fate and moves their operations to Gatwick or Heathrow, but couldn't some newspaper launch a seasonal appeal for those who live nearby to offer exhausted would-be travellers a bed for the night, or for someone to get in there with hot food and some entertainment for the kiddies? Maybe even a few charging stations for people who can't speak with relatives because their phones ran out of battery hours ago? Am I right in thinking that in America some kind of grass-roots relief operation would have mobilised by now? Instead our compassion and resourcefulness seems to be as frozen as the planes glued to the tarmac.
I am so very, very grateful that I'm not going anywhere, that we have all we need for a wonderful Christmas, not least a family to be together with. Having to go out two or three times a day to adjust the lagging on the boiler condensor pipe and warm it up with a hairdryer is a small price to pay for such blessings.
I also have a feeling the Christmas Special might just turn out to be the point where I learn to love Eleven. I am so looking foward to an hour of escapist fun that doesn't angst about Gallifrey, poison the Doctor with radiation sickness or have him throw a tantrum because someone needs rescuing.
Here are some wise words from the wonderful Caitlin Moran:
But trying to work out which is the “best” of the two is pointless. The difference between the Who of Davies and the Who of Moffat is like the difference between Stephen Hawking explaining how rainbows are made — anthelion; the glory; blue light; red light; the rainbows on Saturn’s moon — and Judy Garland singing about being on the other side of one.
Both are beautiful. Both would move any human being to tears. Moffat’s season finale — Amy crying “I remember you! I remember you Raggedy Doctor!” in her wedding dress — was no less affecting than anything Davies has ever done, and that it came at the end of a plot in which the characters moved around in space time like a spirograph made it, if anything, more acute.
Plus, I fancy Rory.
Oh Caitlin, what happened to your shameless Tennant fangirling? Frailty, thy name is woman.
