Ola, as they say in Spain, and I am a little late today (which I can’t say in Spanish) because it has been an exhausting week, even by my standards. I also have a blocked nose and a headache, the latter it must be admitted being brought on by being tired and emotional rather than overwork or bacteria.

I have said I would stay away from the subject of the EU Referendum but it does seem a shame to leave when I consider how many hours I have spent mastering European languages.   Whilst you have been idling away the days trying to score a million on Candy Crush or holding on for computer help lines I have been wrestling with irregular verbs and past participles.  (Look those up if your under 40).  I remember a time when we had been lumbered with an extraordinarily useless newsreader at ITN who claimed to be fluent in no less than seven languages.  ‘Shames one of them isn’t English’ shouted a wag from the back of the studio.

I went to night school to learn Spanish and during the first lesson Miss (Señora) went round the class asking why we wanted to master the Iberian tongue, and not with a waiter this time for many of the pupils.  Everyone was planning to go back packing in South America, clearly oblivious to the fact that in Brazil they actually speak Portuguese. ‘To direct taxi drivers in New York’ I said and bless them, they thought I was joking.  Why, even as far north as Boston, English is as rarely spoken as Cornish.

I did French and German at school but, as was the habit in those days, was never required to speak the language out loud.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there was a compulsory Oral element in the O level exam but on the plus side there’s very little about foreign grammar that isn’t second nature to me.

Times have changed and within a couple of lessons we were chatting away in Espagnol which was just as well as the teacher’s grasp of English was roughly on a par with my Swahili. So, unfortunately, was the other pupils knowledge of basic things like declensions which is why I spent most of the time not mastering ‘Take me to the airport pronto Pedro’ but explaining the arcane concept of the third person singular to my baffled and incredulous classmates.  I think the expression ‘Comprehensive Education’ may well have lost something in translation.

Of course with the expansion of the EU the lingua most franca in leafy Richmond is now Polish and Ukranian and we’ve had to commit to memory the words Hoover and lawnmower in at least one Eastern European dialect just to run a house.

In about twenty years, unless we vote Out there will only be a handful of people who can still speak English properly and understand it’s somewhat intricate use and spelling.  We will be an important historical resource.  There will be grants and interviews by students doing PhDs, possibly even a series on Channel 4.

Once I recover I may give lessons.

Normally it gives me no pleasure to be, yet again, in the right as it generally means that the disaster that I have accurately predicted (Do no revision and you will definitely fail that exam) has come to pass.  With my Oscar predictions however, I am going to make an exception and relish the moment.

Revenant didn’t win its much predicted Best Film award because it clearly wasn’t which is far from saying that Spotlight was.  I suspect it triumphed because by Hollywood standards of morality Catholics are pretty much up there with Nazis as baddies.  You are on pretty safe ground disliking them, especially as they all live on the East a Coast.  Leonardo got his Best Actor Oscar weeks before he would have qualified for a Lifetimes Achievement booby prize and you’d have to be stony hearted to begrudge it.  It must give hope to Kate Winslet, the eternal bridesmaid, although not in real life with her bizarrely named husband number 3.

Mad Max: Fury Road, my own tip,  got no less than 6 Oscars.  How does that not make it the best film?  Do the maths.  And well done Brie Larson (The Room) and Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl)  and Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) who won as I said they should.

Given my success rate I should have put money on the results which is exactly what I have done with the American elections.  Normally, like any sane person, I steer well clear of politics and betting shops which both relentlessly attract the less salubrious elements of society, if that’s not being too harsh on bookmakers.

i have decided on the next President if the USA using that rarer than rhino horn ability – common sense – and here’s how my thinking works.  After two terms of a Democrat who himself had to remind voters that he was not actually born in a manger, America is ready for a change.  He proved to be as disappointing as Lucifer and Tony Blair which leads the desperate voter to Trump.  Yes, that desperate!  Even a nation who elected Nixon KNOWING that his nickname was Tricky Dickie for God’s sake, and Ronald Reagan ALTHOUGH it meant years of Nancy as First Lady (Almost as popular as Cherie) and 2, yes 2 members of the Bush family, even these people will not put Trump in the White House.  Backwoods and backwards as they are as a nation there must be enough people with the intelligence to see that they would become a global laughing stock, even if he doesn’t choose Sarah Palin as a running mate, and I wouldn’t put it past him.

Perhaps someone Scottish can explain how they managed to persuade their voters not to commit suicide, or Putin might take pity and let them have some left over plutonium.  Or not. Just try to imagine the grin on his face.

For me there remains only one possible contender.  Step forward Mr Rubio.  He was not that well known when I placed my bet – the young man at the bookies asked if he was a contestant on something called The Voice – but the odds were surprisingly short.  Possibly I am not the first person to work this out.  He has a lot in his favour: he’s not a Democrat, tick, he’s not a woman, tick, he’s young, tick and best of all he’s not The Donald.  Add to this his Hispanic connections in a country where 25% have Spanish as a first language and might not want a wall across Mexico and I think we have a winner.  You know you can trust me.

One of the many, many benefits of the wisdom that comes with age (In this case about the same age as when doubts creep in about Santa) is that you know when the Government is lying.  I know.  It’s not really a challenge even for a five year old given the generally staggering odds against them telling the truth.

What makes it even simpler is that even if they’re not lying now, whatever they say will not be true eventually.  Remember when Craven A was advertised as ‘the cigarette that soothes your throat’?  The good old days was sugar was not officially classified as a Class A drug?

As we used to say about scurrilous gossip at ITN, even if it’s not true now, it will be in six weeks time.  Over a year ago a friend of mine was warned not to use a well known DJ on the cover if a book for example …

The birth rate in Britain fell so low during the 1920s that women, well, middle class women, were begged to have more children.  Today the average teenager gives birth more eagerly than a rabbit although curiously by the time she turns twenty one she becomes completely barren and needs endless expensive fertility treatment which bring the NHS to its knees.

Before the War British schoolchildren were so rickety, in both senses, that school dinners were introduced and kwashiorkor was all but eliminated in mainland Britain.  Today 99% of all children are so fat that the risk of them exploding poses major Health and Safety issues in the classroom.  I seriously suspect that the playing of conkers has been banned because one striking the distended belly of some Bunteresque brat could detonate them with consequences too ghastly to imagine.

Pensioners who once had the decency to die in their forties now live so long that they will eventually be reduced to eating each other, urban foxes having long since gobbled up all the children grown vast on gobbling cholesterol rich conkers instead of fighting with them as nature intended.

With one voice our leaders tell us that everyone is living far too long and with the next breath warning us that unless we stop eating/drinking/smoking AT ONCE we face certain death within weeks, perhaps days.  How can both these statements possibly be true?  Where on earth are these long-lived people coming from?  Remote Himalayan villages with an average life expectancy of 150?  Is that the real reason that they want to crack down on immigrants?

Live long enough and you’ve seen enough of these hand-brake turns to make your head spin.  No sooner have you weaned yourself off one of life’s ever declining number of pleasures than it becomes compulsory to take it up again.  The upside of all this is that you can ignore everything you read except, of course, my own excellent advice.  Cancel your copy of the Daily Mail and an endless stream of things to worry about simply vanishes.

So turn on the daytime telly, light a fag, open a can of Tennants before composing your very own set of rules by which to pass your remaining years.  Prizes next week for the top ten. Cheers!

We are all familiar with the great lies – ‘There’s a cheque in the post’, ‘It’s not what it looks like’, ‘I can explain’.  Perhaps the worst of these, and one unforgivably put about by women, is that you forget the pain of childbirth.  That is, readers, simply not true.  It is just that the sleepless, exhausting horror of the first few years, that is to say the time you spend awake with your offspring, especially when they are teenagers, makes it pale into insignificance.

My snippets of priceless information have been referred to as ‘factoids’ by people less blessed with bottomless general knowledge but as I have often said to the children, get long odds if you’re betting that I am wrong. We were recently playing the A to Z game on a long journey (Rules explained at the end) and my chosen subject was medical conditions.  Someone dared, dared to challenge me on several of my choices! Me, who worked for over six months on a best forgotten series called ‘General Hospital’ and made millions of videos for drug companies. Behind the camera, since you ask.

Added  to which I would expect everyone over the age of five to have heard of such run-of-the-mill ailments as ascariasis, babesoisos, condylomata acuminate and so on.  Diseases whose existance I was able to prove in a truce by referring to that most useful of volumes – never leave home without it – ‘101 illnesses you don’t want to get’ (Available on Amazon obviously) .  Another top tip while we are at it ; always carry a list of US states and their capitals.  You cannot begin to imagine how often it will prove useful.  Just trust me on that one.

I love  a good fact, something that may well have held me back in the news business and an indisputable one is that February is pretty much guaranteed to lower your spirits.  We’ve all had enough of cold and miserable, inside and out, although another fact is that the worst month for suicides is May, which ironically is the nicest month of the year in England.  Possibly by then people who have been hiding under a duvet sucking their thumb since January don’t even realise that things have finally picked up outside.

I once made the novice mistake of eschewing alcohol in January because it is well known as a depressive and at that point of winter you don’t need to pour misery into a glass, just draw the curtains far enough to see the Christmas tree needles still stuck to the carpet in the puddles of Baileys Irish Cream spilt on New Years Eve.  Of last year.

So my message for today is keep on smiling.  Literally.  Put a smile on your face at all times and it is a FACT that you will begin to feel more cheerful.  There may even be research to prove it.

A-Z game: First person says ‘A is for Apple’, second person says ‘A is for Apple, B is for Banana’ and so on.  There are some subjects where one is allowed to drop letters like X, as in countries or crisp flavours.  It is considered bad form to beat someone with Alzheimer’s.

‘And what do you want to be when you grow up?’ you ask of some whey faced child with fingers mentally crossed that it will blurt out ‘A Kardashian’ before its pushy mother can say ‘ Brain surgeon’ .  Not that it is likely to reply ‘Mini cab controller’ or ‘Tax advisor’ or any of the other mind-numbing things that people really end up as.

So,  if you’re stuck indoors today to avoid having to face the neighbours when you collect the five Valentine’s bouquets that they have ‘kindly’ taken in in your absence, you can pass the hours by playing one of my favourite time wasting game, and one, for once, where the consumption of alcohol is not strictly necessary.

What would you LEAST like your children to become?

The scoring system is exactly the same as used  in ‘Mornington Crescent’: you’ll just know when you’ve got a winner.  Spare parts manager at the Guildford branch of a Ford dealership scores very highly as does my own personal best – Professor of Trans Gender studies at the University of East Anglua.

A trump card used to be Army Padre but as my son with his degree in Theology has failed to find anything else this may well become a serious option.  With touching maternal optimism I continue to scan ‘The Stage’ sits vac column searching for his perfect occupation, ‘Beaufitul young Man wanted to play comatose hospital patient, long contract offered’.

For many parents however, the worst possible thing in the world would be for their child to become a journalist.  ‘Better a UKIP candidate, even an estate agent’ they sob, although the last option was only said in the heat of the moment.

Sadly this is not an uncommon view and with Piers Morgan as an example you can see why.  It probably  explains why so many stroppy teenagers opt for Meejah studies rather than follow their parents advice to read Geography. (It hardly needs saying that my own son has an MA in journalism, does it?)  Social workers would sooner leave children with their natural parents who might raise them to become  lawyers!

What utter folly.  Where on earth, since Agincourt I venture, was ever gathered together a finer band of men and women than at ITN? Accuse me of blowing a trumpet if you wish but if you wanted as award winning example of what can be achieved by people working to the highest possible standards in every sense (I will stand upright in front of camera even after 6 pints (of wine)) then look no further.

When it came to professional standards of honesty, accuracy, God we were slaves to akuracy, loyalty and integrity maintained despite the siren call of an extraordinary capacity for strong drink and private lives that would make a phone hacker blush, we had no equal.

And the very worst thing for anyone to be when they grow up? Easy.  A person without a sense of humour.

Welcome, trusty reader, and today’s task for Lady K is to bring you up to speed with what’s what at the Oscars. I am assuming at this point that you aren’t on the voting list and won’t even be going to LA.  (I wouldn’t bother.  It is an unspeakably ghastly place and the goodie bags for nominees, said to be worth thousands of pounds contain dross a five year would toss aside). Tell me you do at least have an in-house cinema?

So in a selfless quests to save you wasting your time this weekend I have personally sat through a great many of the nominated movies, many wasted hours in some cases, and here’s what you need to know.

The most talked about and hotly tipped is ‘The Revenant’.  Now, I’ve worked on outside broadcasts, which only ever appear to take place in seriously inclement weather and produce the kind of feelings that got Jeremy Clarkson sacked but, big but, just because you had a miserable time making it, doesn’t make it good.  Or award winning.  It’s supposed to be based on a true story.  Even the charitable would only go as far as loosely based. The original happened in August on pretty flat territory.  Spot the differences.  As to the ‘acting’ – sling me in an icy river and I’ll give you a convincing impression of cold.  It’s not acting sweetie.  Best thing in it is the bear, leaving aside the fact she fails to kill him and cut out two unnecessary hours.

‘Bridge of Spies’ won’t win but it’s well worth seeing.  Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance, who should get Best Supporting Actor, what’s not to like, and its a good solid watch.  Also lots of cold scenes.

‘Brooklyn’ is another listing for Best Picture.  Quite sweet, great costumes, but it won’t change the course of history. Possibly funded by the Catholic Church as a reaction to ‘Spotlight’ which takes a decidedly negative view of kiddy fiddling.  Neither is in the same league as ‘Doubt’, something you should definitely make an effort to watch.

‘Joy’ has a Best Actress nomination. Euphoria and mops have no link in my mind; bit like trying to finish the sentence ‘Donald Trump is attractive because …’ Don’t bother.  Sickeningly jingoistic as well.

‘The Big Short’ is on similar lines to nowhere.  Who gets excited about synthetic mortgages or is won over by a girl in a bubble bath explaining it?  Only, only a banker.

My own front runners are ‘Mad Max, Fury Road’ and ‘Room’.  As a long time fan of the Max Max movies it was with heart in mouth that I went to Number 4, made years after the others and without Mel Gibson but what a great film! To be uncharacteristically brutal I couldn’t actually tell you the name of the actor who plays Max; the film is totally stolen by Charlize Theron.  A stand on your seat and cheer movie. I loved it.

Very, very different to ‘Room’, no warrior women crossing the desert and kicking ass here.  It is based on the story of the Austrian man who kept his daughter in a cellar and raped her for years, family viewing but not in a good way.  Your first, and very understandable reaction, is probably a firm no thank you but stay with me, it is worth seeing and for the first time in living memory the child is not a bowl-cut haired moppet but a real kid.  Brie Larson plays the mother and has a well deserved nomination for Best Actress along with Alicia Vikander for ‘The Danish Girl’ – she plays the wife to Eddie Redmayne’s transgender girl. She, Alicia not Eddie, is the best thing in this film, apart from the costumes. I’ve never been a fan of Miss Redmayne who seems unsure if she’s Arthur or Martha at the best of times.  Simpering on an industrial scale.

Actually this is a good year for women with Cate Blanchett quite brilliant in ‘Carol’, a lesbian love story set in the stylish fifties but on far gentler lines than ‘Blue is the warmest colour’, a film which would certainly have brought Queen Victoria up to speed. Rooney Mara, an Audrey Hepburn lookalike as Cate’s girlfriend, is also a hot tip.

And finally, ‘Amy’ is up for Best Documentary.  It may not win but make an effort.  It is to genuinely heart rending what ‘Joy’ is to saccharine.  You choose.

 

 

In the light of the Labour Party report into why they lost the election – commendably limited to two words one of which was Ed – and the interminable wait for the Chilcott enquiry, which I suspect could be summed up even more briefly by the single word ‘Liar’ I have rooted out from the archives the entirely independent remarks of Judge Kingston after his investigation into scurrilous rumours concerning one of ITN’s loveliest lady Floor Managers, Lady Kingston.

“Despite the photographic evidence, sadly mislaid by the Crown Prosecution Service, Lady Kingston denies doing News At Ten dressed as a fairy, claiming that she would not have begun to compete with those able to claim the description ‘fairy’ on duty that night. In evidence she claimed to have been to ‘a posh drinks party during the supper break (4.30pm – 9.30pm) which explains the dress and I cannot recall on oath where the wings came from. Or the wand with which I may have cued the newscaster’.

Lady Kingston strongly rebuts the suggestion that she did News At Ten from Blackpool during the Party Conference season dressed as a policeman.  It is her clear recollection that she was only wearing a helmet.  Sadly no pictures exist to support her story.

Also firmly denied is the accusation that she set fire to one or more chairs in a local wine bar.  She accepts that her companions, in an ill-advised act of gallantry may have done so following her remarks about the coldness of the weather and the parsimonious natures of the hostelry’s heating arrangements but as she explained to the Enquiry, no-one can expect a girl to recall the names of everyone she got drunk with in the (52) weeks before Christmas.

Also occurring during the festive season was the case of the invoice from a mini cab company for waiting time outside Kingston Towers, allegedly whilst two other members of staff attempted to post a cat and a Christmas cake through the letter box during the early hours of the morning. The enquiry concludes that the driver who claims to have witnessed the scene may well have been intoxicated.

Lady Kingston gives little credence to the claim by a member of middle management that he saw her and another lady Floor Manager attempting to enter the building via a brick wall at 4.pm.  She thinks that this easily made mistake may be the result of poor lighting conditions around the entrance and demands that this be referred to the Union’s Health and Safety Committee as it displays a lamentable lack of care by management towards tired and emotional employees.

We come now to the slanderous claims concerning Lady Kingston’s expenses claims. She freely admits to tearing a £50 note into pieces when a junior member of management had the sheer affrontery to say that he had been ‘charitable’ in signing her claim form.  Her aim was to give him a clear illustration that petty cash fiddling was, in every sense, beneath her.  Evidence from his secretary suggests that his afternoon was usefully employed glueing the fragments together.

And finally, as they say after all the best bulletins, it is true that someone (whose name she will not reveal unless asked)  refused to work with her because she made him feel ‘stupid’.  It is a tribute to the loyalty so frequently displayed within this organisation that the other Floor Managers refused to work with the complainant until he admitted that they ALL made him feel stupid.

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A small, dedicated, efficient – and most importantly – invisible workforce.  Such was the stuff, I imagine, of ITN’s managements’ dreams. And without even having to go on a paint-balling, team building, human resources course, I think I can claim to have reached this happy state with my own devoted band of domestic assistants.

Whereas  ITN wanted to own you, body and soul, I ask for little. At home staff turn up, do their allotted tasks, preferably in my absence and submit a monthly invoice.  Perfection.  On reflection this may well have been the plan at ITN but my terms and conditions do not require people to work the sort of unsocial hours that would make a Junior Doctor faint, deal with unpleasant politicians – is there any other kind? – or submit expenses claims.

We might have made it look like the work of a moment but have you ever tried to account for hundreds of used banknotes thrust into your hands – money intended to sustain you and the crew through a wet and windy week in Blackpool – and again, is there any other kind? – with has INEXPLICABLY vanished by the time you got to Euston?  Those expenses sheets were not the work of a moment, dear reader, and possibly were the only truly creative writing that any of us did.

But to return home, isn’t there always, even in Paradise, a snake in the grass, an ancient mariner, a Banquo’s ghost, casting their gloomy shadow?

Mine comes in the form of Lawnmower Man and any reference to a horror film is entirely deliberate.  It must be admitted that my garden hirings have not been an unqualified success. There was an entirely blameless, and not unattractive Irishman who my husband suspected was burying illicit arms in the compost heap and then a wild-eyed Care In the Community youth who constantly pruned his own body   A single handed/ fingered walking Tarantine movie, at least he reduced fertiliser outlay to fish and bone.

Enter Lawnmover Man whose sole aim in life does not centre upon my need for grass containment but on his desire to ambush me in the shrubbery and subject me to the peat-dark outpourings of his troubled soul, episodes that would leave even the most devoted fan of Dostoyevsky gagging for a little comic relief.  He would not normally have got past the security lights had he not confused me with an actress with a similar name and behaved in such a grovelling, star-struck manner that vanity triumphed over common sense.  (And not for the first time, you remind me).

Getting rid of him was not simple. Not one to take the subtle hint – ‘You’re fired’ – my creative juices were taken up for months devising ways to reduce the size of the lawn and the need for him.  Whole gardening series could have been filmed as I contemplated the merits of paving, decking, cobbling and concreting.  More ‘construction’ than ‘constructive’ dismissal but it’s the thought that counts.

But now it is done. The last blade of grass is history.  Where once was an emerald sward now, thanks to the services of a miniature digger, there is a shiny sheet of water large enough to have waves and self-governing Islands.  And best of all, Lawnmower Man has been replaced by Pond Man, a sunny natured, raven haired Italian who is teaching me to tango on the lakeside.  An entirely better kettle of koi.

Thank God that’s over, I say, and certainly not for the first time. I refer, somewhat belatedly, to the Festive Season, that time of year from August when you can’t open a newspaper without reading how to drop a dress size in ten days, presumably so you will confidently drop a dress in ten minutes at the office Christmas party.  Plus the endless sanctimonious whining about the commercialisation of Christmas – as if the visitors to  Baby Jesus all turned up empty handed, did they?

I will admit to loving the run-up to Christmas and my house is decked with enough lights to outshine a hotel in Las Vegas as soon as the clocks go back but by the time the Big Day itself arrives, I’ve had enough.

A particularly stupid mistake one year was to give my teenage son a large sum of cash so he could choose his own presents.  Ho, Ho, Ho shrieked Santa when there was nothing to wrap on Christmas Eve and an emergency dash to the shops was needed on a day when I venture most women already have more than enough to do.

Yet again having to down two mince pies, a carrot and the half pint of sherry left by the chimney (My boys are sticklers for tradition) suddenly remembered at three o’clock on Christmas morning finally tips me over the edge. Faced at that point with the prospect of two days of close confinement with my family, visions of ‘The Great Escape’ starts looping round in my head and I have started planning a tunnel whose purpose is most definitely NOT to have anyone home for Christmas.

Add to the mix that there is only January to look forward to with its awful weather and the fact that everyone else is in the West Indies (Incidentally horribly vulgar nowadays – we are never going again) and the shops are full of dreadful tat, mostly returned unwanted gifts and brought-in sale rubbish. The final nail in the coffin of the Will to Live is, of course, the New Year Resolution, all of which will by now be but a faint memory having been abandoned faster than a baby girl in China.

So, dear reader, a few life affirming, positive and achievable thoughts to see you through to February.

Firstly, resolve to carry on drinking.  Dry January?  Are you mad?  Ditto smoking.  Remember that nicotine patches are almost certainly made by war-mongering  multi-national drug companies and should be shunned.  Fall shamelessly asleep at yoga or Pilates – isn’t it supposed to make you relax?  Snore. Resolve, given the opportunity, to drive slowly in front of caravans and boast as freely about your knowledge of daytime TV as you did last year about your kale consumption.  And possibly aim for my own personal favourite – achieve a life-long ambition to make a periodontist cry.

Happy 2016 people.