Yo ho ho, bloody hell NO!

The Husband and I were watching TV with The Dog last night when The Husband groaned audibly and expressed outraged disbelief.

We like (some of) the programmes and The Dog is mad keen on the adverts, so much so we call then his little programmes.  Adverts have a lot of animals in them, even when the product being marketed isn't pet-related.  Check this one out, for instance; the new chocolate Weetabix ad (anthema by the way - chocolate YES, Weetabix CERTAINLY - see yesterday's blog for how many of those I can eat in any one 24-hour period - but any combination thereof is just outlandish), which is pitched squarely at the human family members, yet features a "talking" dog, cat and hamster, and drives our dog into a territorial frenzy.

Animals in the box in the corner of the room have always done this to him, even cartoon ones of just a few sketchily suggestive lines are immediately pounced upon and "seen off".  When he was a newly-brought-home pup, if an animal walked off the screen stage right he'd run into the other room to see where it had gone. Now we have to place obstacles in front of the TV to stop him reaching it, or the screen gets plastered with watered-down snot and doggie lick.

Back to my main clause; "The Husband groaned audibly and expressed outraged disbelief ".  The Husband is a man of saintly tolerance and an easy equanimity of mind.  He doesn't get cross very often even about things that directly impact on him, so he really isn't one to get vexed about stuff out there in the Big Wide World. If he were on Grumpy Old Men he wouldn't be able get mild chunner going, let alone a five-minute diatribe.

So what could have irked him to the point of expressed exasperation?

It was the appearance of Santa Claus in an advert on 12 October, that's what.  Does The Husband not like Christmas, then?  No, the husband loves Christmas, and celebrates it like a beaming Victorian paterfamilias, keeps it as well as any reformed Ebeneezer Scrooge.  He knows The First Husband had a lot of Bah Humbug in him, so on 1 December, every year since we started living together, he has taken me to buy our Christmas tree, and happily hauled down the boxes from the loft, so that I get a decorated house for all the thirty-one days of December and six days of January until Twelfth Night, over five weeks of twinkle, sparkle and festooning.

But that is first day of December. It isn't 12 October, which is nigh-on fifty days short of the even the beginning of December. We haven't even done Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night yet.  Our American cousins haven't eaten a single thankful turkey yet.  UK children haven't even done half a reluctant foot-dragging term of the new academic year yet.

So give it a rest, willya, intoducing Santa Claus into our front rooms in a mid-October which is so balmily mild it hasn't produced more than a hearthrug of fallen leaves.  Let us have the first frost.  Let us at least scrape a windscreen before you sell yule to us.  Can we please do our holidays in the right order with no overlap?

And while I am about it, NO adverts for Creme Eggs on Boxing Day when we are as stuffed as Mr Creosote.  Let's finish the waffer thin mints first.