Saturday, December 1, 2012

As Eric Idle once said to John Cleese...

“Let’s have a Ding! Dong!”

Here’s “"Ding! Dong! Merrily on High!” by the choristers of Kings College, Cambridge (2:39) from 2010.

Tomorrow (Sunday, December 2nd) is the first Sunday of Advent, so before you can say “Jack Robinson” (my father used to say that) Christmas will be upon us again. Actually, Christmas has been upon us since well before Halloween, as the store displays hereabouts began going up in September. I think it has something to do with the waning of the Harvest Moon.

10 comments:

  1. One and all, I received a comment from someone whose site could be described, if not as "porn on the internet", as definitely adult in content. So I didn't publish the comment because I didn't want to include the link to that person's site. However, the comment itself contained a legitimate question, which I repeat here:

    I don't remember Eric Idle saying that. What did John Cleese say in reply?

    Commenter Who Shall Remain Nameless, John Cleese didn't say anything. The assembled folk immediately launched into an enthusiastic rendition of "Ding! Dong! Merrily on High!" as I recall. This didn't happen in a movie; it was in a skit on television many years ago. For some unknown reason I never forgot it.

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  2. I pray that my comment escapes the vindictive and fierce attentions of this blog's heartless Nazi censors... All I wanted to say was that, in my humble opinion, Christmas starts way too early these days.
    (I hope with all my heart that this remark is not too outrageous)

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  3. Yorkshire Pudding and other interested parties, this blog does not have heartless Nazi censors whose fierce attentions are vindictive. No, indeedy! This blog just has little old me who tries to maintain certain standards of decorum around here. This is not to imply that little old me is against certain activities between consenting adults in the privacy of their own boudoirs, little old me is just not going to have photographs of said activities on this blog. Some people like to do certain things, some people like to watch people do certain things, and some people like to look at pictures of people doing certain things. Whatever floats your boat, but in private, please, not splashed all over my computer screen. I hope I make myself clear.

    I do not find your remark too outrageous. In fact, I agree that Christmas starts way too early these days.

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  4. Ah! I am so relieved to have had my comment accepted by "Little Old Me". See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po5wZTYPfEE
    But please tell me why you were dressed as an old woman in this cartoon?

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  5. Y.P., I'm afraid you have me mixed up with Granny Little Old Me, who is no longer with us. Christmas started for Granny Little Old Me the day she ran away to greener climes with Al Gore, the Chlorofluorocarbon King.

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  6. Oddly enough, 'having a ding dong' is also a euphemism for a fierce argument in the UK. How apt!

    I'm afraid I succumbed to the Christmas marketing yesterday and bought my first mince pies.

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  7. Shooting Parrots, thanks for that bit of information, of which I was not aware. Nnow I see the humour (your spelling) of the Eric Idle-John Cleese skit. And it took only thirty years....

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  8. Ding dong menas the same thing here in the nether regions of the world.

    Starts too early down here too. Haven't even started my Christmas cards yet... let alone the calendars. Sigh.

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  9. Hello rhymeswithplague,

    And strangely enough, I seem to recall I just reposted an article titled "Prawn on the Internet".

    Anyway, I have finally arrived. You must excuse me but I've been rather stressed out for all the wrong reasons. That's why it took so long to arrive.

    Our mission should be to make Monty Python seem like serious drama. And please, I refer to the the um festive time as 'Boxing Day Eve'.

    With that, I now return to my shy and humble blog. And remember we can live life with realistic positive anticipation, rather than negative speculation. Well, it sounded good.

    Gary

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  10. Katherine, "having a ding dong" may mean having a fierce argument in the UK and NZ, but in the US we have never heard of such a thing. No wonder we are reviled by the rest of the world.

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...