Tinsel

Ho ho ho!

Every year for the last ten years or so I’ve written a Christmas poem or two. So this year I’ve gathered them all together as a present for some close friends, and then I thought, well, why not make it available generally?

So Puddlehopper Books and myself are pleased to announce to the world a pamphlet just for Christmas, Tinsel! It contains some of my various poems written especially for Christmas and it’s available through the Lulu website.

Tinsel is the ideal stocking filler, a book for evenings of warmth and that post Christmas glow. Details on how to order Tinsel can be found below, as well as one of the poems from the book.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/robert-garnham/tinsel/paperback/product-24334960.html

This Year’s Advent Calendar

Well this year’s advent calendar was a strange one. Here’s every day in it’s unusual glory.

Today’s advent calendar picture was of a duck wearing a Groucho Marx moustache, nose and glasses.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a clown waving his big shoe at a smoke detector
Today’s advent calendar picture is of the Easter Bunny trying to keep two sides of a build-it-yourself shed upright while Marilyn Monroe reads the instructions.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of the seven dwarves waiting, angrily, at a mobile chip van, while the lady serving, who for some reason is a panda, is looking at holiday photos being shown to her by Snarf from Thundercats
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Gandalf at the self service Tesco machine
Today’s advent calendar picture is of an advent calendar
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Vladimir Putin eating a Pot Noodle
Today’s advent calendar picture is of sixteen Laurels (from Laurel and Hardy) and Sid James queuing at a self service cafeteria.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a frog trying to push a sofa up a flight of stairs, backwards, sweating profusely.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of an igloo, a bin with contents strewn around, and a polar bear flaked out by tranquilliser dart.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a Peruvian brown bear wearing a scarf scraping frost off the windscreen of a parked car with its engine running.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a sneezing unicorn.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a badger and a rabbit having a row about who gets the last chicken mayonnaise sandwich in the chiller cabinet while TV’s Victoria Coren Mitchell sneaks in and grabs it for herself.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a stack of suspended ceiling tiles, £11 each plus postage and packing
Today’s advent calendar picture is of the nativity scene. (Bit early but there you go).
Today’s advent calendar picture is of fifteen donkeys wearing sombreros and a man at a stall trying to sell them more sombreros but the donkeys are having none of it.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a badger getting a refund on a pair of trousers.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Lord Byron on roller skates in a crumpled heap next to a slightly dented Ford Focus.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a panda in a library reading a Will Self novel, double checking some of the weightier vocabulary in a dictionary.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Mr T from The A Team at the boating lake in the park, rowing a rowing boat past some rhododendrons.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a squid waiting in the queue for the Primark changing room with a Tigger the Tiger onesie.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Darth Vader in a lightsabre battle with Alan Bennett.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Michael Portillo looking very grumpy on a rail replacement bus. Oh, and why not, Skeletor from HeMan is sitting three rows behind him, eating a Pot Noodle.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a confused ostrich.

A Christmas miracle

It was a Christmas miracle
Just like the ones you hear about.
Mum had lost her glasses,
Couldn’t find them anywhere.

All year long without them,
Assumed for some reason I’d nicked them.
Why would I nick your glasses?, I asked.
For a crazy prop, maybe.
For one of your shows?

(I mean, seriously,
Don’t you think I’d have at least
Asked her?)

All year long without them.
Squinting at cooking instructions.
Just get a new pair, I said.
No, she replied,
They’re here somewhere.
Are you sure you didn’t nick them
For one of your crazy shows?

All year long without them.
Bifocals too, she said.
I remember having them
At Christmas.
It’s a problem which really
Does vex.
Seriously, what have you
Done with my specs?

All year long without them.
They’d hang on a chain round her neck
So that she couldn’t lose them.
And then she lost them.
And anyway,
At what point during my act
Would I need a pair of glasses on a chain?

It’s not like I’m a drag act.

All year long without them.
And do you know where they were?
In the Christmas decorations box,
Sitting atop tinsel having been
Packed erroneously
Eleven months before.

Another Christmas miracle,
Another Christmas delight.

Seriously, though, I protest,
I wouldn’t have just taken them.
Jeez.