Hello again, I hope your year’s got off to a good start. For me, as noted in my recent update about my career and being a carer, my circumstances are set to change due to my mother’s ongoing support needs and funding cuts for my current job role. But Mum is much better than she was last year, I’ve already secured a new freelance position, and I have other financial support, so there’s good reason to be positive and hopeful about the year ahead.
I’m also celebrating 10 years of blogging and YouTubing, and that decade has really flown by! Thank you so much if you’ve played any part in that, whether it’s quietly reading my posts or interacting with me in some way, I really appreciate it!
But to focus on January, I have started going out and about more again, now that my mother’s situation has eased a bit. So I’ve met a couple of friends, eaten some delicious food and taken a few nice walks. Meanwhile at home, alongside my usual favourite TV programmes, I’ve been having a stand-up comedy binge by watching several specials and finishing an autobiography. So there’s quite a bit to mention as usual, none of which is sponsored to appear here, and I hope you enjoy!
And now my mother and I have listened to the audiobook of his new autobiography, Keep Laughing, and we’ve really enjoyed it, so I wanted to do a review here as well. This isn’t sponsored or gifted, I’m just a fan, and I hope you find it interesting.
Happy New Year! I hope you’ve had a wonderful time this festive season. Or if it’s been a difficult period, or even a tough year overall, then I hope 2026 works out better for you.
My mother and I are certainly hoping it will be more positive after everything we’ve been through in the last 12 months. I’ve written a lot about being a carer for her, and recently brought our story up to date by reflecting on the year and the considerable progress we’ve made. We did have a lovely, relaxing, over-indulgent Christmas, I’m pleased to say, so that’s put us in the right frame of mind for the year ahead. The future of my job is very uncertain, granted, but whatever happens with that I’ll be alright. So fingers crossed things continue to go well for us.
I previously posted about the things I enjoyed during the advent period leading up to Christmas, so now it’s time to catch up with all the other entertainment that’s been keeping me occupied since then. So let’s jump straight into it, and I hope you enjoy!
It’s been a long year for my mother and I, so we’re glad that Christmas has finally come around, and thankfully the preparations have been going well, just as I hope they have been for you. Granted, there is the potential loss of my job next year hanging over my head, through no fault of my own, but that won’t affect me as severely as the friend I provide support for. And given everything that’s already gone on at home during 2025, my mother and I just want to relax, forget about our problems and over-indulge to celebrate Christmas, as you’re supposed to do. And we’ve got everything we need for that.
So I’ve actually been able to go out and about in London a few times this month, now that Mum’s more comfortable being on her own in the house again, having got some of her independence and confidence back. Sometimes it’s just been for walks, but I’ve also met up with a friend as well.
And then at home I’ve been enjoying a lot of entertainment, including dramas, comedies and music. Some things are still ongoing or are on my to do list, so I won’t mention them just yet, but there are already plenty of bits and pieces I can talk about already. So with the usual disclaimer that none of this is sponsored or gifted, I hope you enjoy this varied selection.
Hello again, I hope you’re doing alright and are looking forward to Christmas.
During the last couple of months, my mother has been recovering well from her fractured wrist, both physically and mentally, thanks to all the support she’s received from the NHS and social services. There still are, and always will be, times when she gets anxious or finds things difficult of course. But having melatonin to help her sleep at night, and a wheelchair to help her get out and about more, has given her a real boost, along with various other forms of help she’s had. And at the very end of November I was even able to go out for a long walk and explore the shops by myself like I used to do, because she felt able to cope on her own.
You can find out more about all of that in my journal posts as usual, including some recovery of my own after I had a wisdom tooth extracted. You can also hear an interview I recorded in October for RNIB Connect Radio about my caring role, which was featured in their Good Company show and then released independently as a podcast.
All that aside, I’ve naturally been enjoying plenty of entertainment as well including Doctor Who, comedies, podcasts and audiobooks. So that’s what I’m going to focus on here, and I hope you enjoy this latest roundup!
So now it’s time to move on to Series 6. With the previous series, new showrunner Steven Moffat had given the programme a big overhaul, and very successfully too. So this time around things are more settled. The 11th Doctor is again joined by the gorgeous Karen Gillan playing the feisty Amy Pond, along with Arthur Darvill in the role of her newly wedded husband Rory Williams. They make such an enjoyable trio with great chemistry between them, because they became such good friends off-camera when they started working on Series 5 together. You can see how much fun they have together in the Confidential documentaries as well.
We also see plenty more of Alex Kingston as River Song, and we finally discover who she really is. Her identity is revealed as a mid-season cliffhanger, as originally the series was split into two halves, with a 12-week gap between them. Such a break had never happened in the modern era before, so it was a bit frustrating at the time, especially given the big reveal. But at least the series can be watched all in one go now. Other mysteries from the previous series, about The Silence and the exploding Tardis, also continue to develop here, along with new story arcs about the Doctor’s death and Amy’s pregnancy.
So there’s plenty to get through in this post, in terms of the episodes and the various extra features as per usual, and once again I’ve compiled a playlist for the series with lots of clips and bonus material. I hope you enjoy!
But she will forever be remembered most fondly for playing the snobbish, candlelight supper-serving, ‘Lady of the House’ Hyacinth Bucket – pronounced ‘bouquet’ – in the wonderful sitcom Keeping Up Appearances during the 90s, written by Roy Clarke. Patricia was perfectly cast and in 1996, the year after it ended, she was voted the UK’s most popular actress at an awards ceremony for the BBC’s 60th anniversary. By that point she had already been honoured with an OBE 3 years earlier, she was granted a CBE in 2004, and ultimately became a Dame in the 2017 New Year Honours list, for her services to theatre and charity work.
Welcome to my latest monthly roundup, I hope you’re doing well.
In terms of my caring responsibilities towards my mother, who is still recovering from her broken wrist, I’ve continued posting separate journal updates about everything that’s been going on, split into Part 1 and Part 2 for this month. So do read those posts if you want to be kept informed about that side of my life. Suffice to say that while we are still finding things difficult in some ways, she is continuing to get various forms of help, and we are now starting to consider the support required for her longer term care needs. Plus we’ve already had a very positive development at the start of October, perhaps the most significant to date, that has the potential to make a huge difference long-term. I’ll tell you about that in my October journal posts in the weeks ahead, and it’s going to be an important transitional month if all goes to plan.
Apart from all that though, I have kept myself entertained in various ways as well, with music, TV shows and an audiobook. So here are the main things I’ve been enjoying, and I hope you find them interesting to read about as always.
50 years ago the classic hotel sitcom Fawlty Towers opened for business on the BBC. And while it only ran for 2 series, it’s no exaggeration to say that it blessed us with 12 of the greatest half hours of comedy that have ever been broadcast on British TV.
The huge popularity of this BAFTA-winning programme continues to grow to this day as well, most recently aided by the stage show that has just been broadcast on TV to mark the anniversary. It just goes to show that, unlike many old sitcoms which ended up being very much of their time, Fawlty Towers still holds up perfectly well, and still blows all of the modern comedies out of the water, which is a remarkable achievement.
Created by John Cleese with his first wife Connie Booth and set in Torquay (though they never filmed there), and accompanied by Dennis Wilson’s beautiful theme tune, it has an excellent mixture of characters who find themselves caught up in a variety of highly amusing and increasingly farcical scenarios.
While manager Basil (played by John) constantly hopes for a relaxing day with normal guests, and strives to find ways to have a fancier class of clientele visiting his establishment, it never takes long for things to unravel, driving him to frustration. It doesn’t help that his sharp-tongued, fear-inducing dragon of a wife Sybil (Prunella Scales) is constantly nagging him, and that his keen and well-meaning yet confused Spanish waiter Manuel (played by the dearly missed Andrew Sachs) is impossible to communicate with. He does at least have support from waitress Polly (played by Connie), who provides some sanity to keep Basil grounded, but he makes life difficult for her sometimes too, by using her in his attempts to get out of sticky situations.
The show has a solid hit rate of verbal, visual and physical gags, along with plot strands that come together nicely, and a first-rate cast who bring it to life so brilliantly. And such was the amount of action packed into each episode that the scripts were twice as long compared to other sitcoms and had twice as many camera cuts.
The humour is quintessentially British too, so much so that 3 attempts to remake the series in America and one in Germany all inevitably failed. It has inspired several other sitcoms though, with the makers of shows like Father Ted, Cheers and 3rd Rock From The Sun all acknowledging it as a major influence. And in general it set an incredibly high benchmark that few sitcoms (if any) since have come anywhere close to.
I’ve watched the series countless times over the years, but now is the perfect excuse to watch it yet again and actually write a bit about it to celebrate the occasion. So I’m going to go through the episodes and the extras on the Blu-ray set I have, as well as checking out the stage play on TV, which I didn’t get around to seeing in person in the West End. Plus I’ve put together a Youtube playlist of highlights and bonus material to go with this. So I hope you enjoy!
Hello again, I hope you’re doing well and have been enjoying the summer. If you’ve continued to follow my blog over the last couple of months then (a) thank you so much and (b) you’ll have seen there’s good reason for me not going out much lately, given the issues at home that I’ve now opened up about. Looking after my mother has become a much bigger drain on my time and energy than it used to be, but we are gradually getting help now.
Still, beyond all the disability and care-related stuff I’ve been sharing recently, I’ve also kept myself occupied and distracted with various forms of entertainment, some of which I’ve written separate blog posts on as well.
So here’s a quick roundup of things I’ve written about and entertainment I’ve been enjoying over the last couple of months. I’m still not making videos to go with these posts for the time being, but I hope you find these bits and pieces interesting.
Well Eye Never 
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