A Betwixtmas guide to hibernating in peace

Not a new thing on this list - just as it should be.

Hello! Hope you had - are having - a lovely break, or a break if not lovely. So what to do with ourselves now and into January (NYE’s last hurrah and any work aside)?

I don’t really like telling people what to watch, read or do, as I mostly ignore recommendations myself. I often wait until something reaches a critical mass in terms of people saying it’s brilliant, then hop on. The glory of being a late adopter is that you avoid more of the “must watch” driven by hype that later turns out to be disappointing. I still look forward to watching The Sopranos… some day.

That said, I have been enjoying Keira Knightley’s frazzled mother-killer spy turn in Black Doves. It’s thrilling but campy, a little bit tongue in cheek. As an aside: it’s also been nice to see - and shocking that this even feels unusual - actors on screen without them all being filtered to death through a peachy blur. They all have texture! Lines! Pores! And look all the better for it. It’s visually more interesting and suits the story to see its heroine presented like the adult she is, not the teenager she was launched as decades ago. (And she looks amazing.)

But that’s been very much an anomaly. The limbo between Christmas time and New Year is really no time for newness, imo. Instead - and do whatever you want of course - I can recommend we:

1. Go North

Never mind Mr Darcy and his emotional support mantlepiece (have you noticed how much time he spends staring at it in times of crisis? People on the internet have). Well, actually I do mind, P&P having been a formative experience for 13-year-old moi and my peers. But what about Mr Thornton, his furious Northern counterpart in North and South, or what I like to think of as P&P with riots? We must not forget about him.

This year marks two decades since the release of the BBC’s 2004 adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s socially conscious classic, starring Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe (now available on Apple TV). I once spent a happy winter freelancing from home with this on on repeat in the background, and much more got done than you’d imagine.

Maybe I was inspired by Mr Thornton’s industriousness. As a child of the North (one grandfather was even the adopted son of Yorkshire mill owners, who then lost their money as the wool industry declined, much like Mr Thornton and his cotton-based troubles. More fun to follow along on screen than IRL, I’d bet), my school years involved learning more about the industrial revolution than you might ever need to know. So all the trouble at the mill rings reassuringly familiar, and best of all, in the battle of North v South, in this case at least, as Mr Thornton, his mother and his love interest Margaret Hale battle it out, the North very much comes up trumps for once.

Now if only someone would sort out the West Coast mainline.

2. Pride and Prejudice

Not forgotten, not unloved, but talking of P&P… it’s still the OG post-Christmas comfort watch. Yes, I cracked this year and returned, and it’s even better - funnier - than I remembered. Alison Steadman pre-Pamela! Lizzie touring Darcy’s pile and nearly speechless at what she turned down! Colin Firth with a baby face! Perfection.

3. A Smug Run

We must all have our festive traditions, and this is mine. Partly because it’s much nicer to run about Cheshire fields than Zone 2 London (and with cleaner air), I run much more when back home with family for Christmas. (Also to escape them, ho ho JK. Maybe.) Which has, over time, morphed into a Smug Run TM on Boxing Day and beyond. Even December 25 once, I think, which surprised even me.

The key thing to a Smug Run is however stuffed to the the gills you may feel, whenever you pass a tired-looking pedestrian you must pull yourself together and trot past as if you’re feeling top of the world. Soon, you will feel it too.

Scatter a few in during Betwixtmas, and you will be ready for the big one - a slow and smug victory circuit round your neighbourhood on January 1. Nothing clears a hangover better than overtaking someone else with one.

3. Jilly Cooper’s Name Novels

Was Rivals the best thing you watched this year? (QTWTAIY.) And is it even fair to recommend Cooper’s early rom coms when they are already so loved?

But I have been shocked and appalled that many of my friends who loved the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals have not only not read the book (glorious, brilliant, I’m jealous they have yet to do so), but also the great JC’s earlier works - the series of novels she named after her heroines. Ragingly un-PC by now - they are half a century old after all - Bella, Octavia, Emily (probably the most un-PC of the lot, sorry) et al see our heroines gallivanting around London, the Highlands, the south of France and the waterways of the English countryside on a hellish barge, in search of glamour, adventure and, most of all, love.

They typically have dull jobs they hope to ditch, wear fabulous Seventies get-ups like green culottes with cut-outs and dye their hair pastel pink to match their inappropriate dress for the hunt ball, and there is all that typical Cooper social commentary and humour with a shade more grit than in her Ruthshire Chronicles and beyond. All wrapped up with a happy ending, of course.

I spent a joyful Christmas reading these as a preteen, and didn’t ever stop.

What about you - any forgotten or overlooked gems to recommend? Do let me know in the comments.