Soap operas

It’s “Neighbours”.

For many years, it was “Crossroads”. We lived in Birmingham, and the ITV studios weren’t far away. We often saw the actors in our local shops. It involved a real effort of will not to smile at them. It was one of Thomas-the-Elder’s very first words. Rachel was giving him a bath one day when he started pushing her away and trying to say something. She realised he meant, it’s time for Crossroads.

When it went down, we struggled to find a replacement. At last! “El Dorado”. That one was good. It only lasted a year – Alan Yentob killed it, and has never been forgiven. I should have written my letter to them, which was to suggest they change the name. It sounded like foreign muck to half the population, and like something you didn’t really want to watch, to the rest. It was set in a British expatriate community in Spain, a brilliant idea. I read somewhere once that Marks and Spencer doubled the sale of a certain soup when they stopped calling it “vichyssoise” and re-labelled it “leek and potato”.

Now we’ve got Neighbours. We tried “Home and Away” the last two days. I found it unbearable.

My cold is no better. I spent yesterday afternoon in bed. Like my husband’s cold which preceded, it remains confined to the head. It means we can’t go to lunch with my sister-in-law tomorrow for the annual exchange of Christmas presents – she has suffered a series of chest infections in the last 18 months, and has been in and out of hospital. Currently she’s on steroids and bouncing about like a spring lamb, but I still don’t want to go near her carrying an active respiratory virus.

What are steroids? The Wikipedia entry seemed completely irrelevant to my sister-in-law’s problems.

So Christmas chores are being pared down where possible. Fortunately knitting doesn’t involve much expenditure of energy. I’ve finished the first ASJ sleeve and picked up the stitches for the second. Both that and the hat should be ready for Loch Fyne – a week today.