(Christmas) Holiday

Getting a pair of insanely comfortable Toast pyjamas and sheepskin slippers for Christmas has sealed the deal for me. While I'm still back at home in Bristol my days have been characterised by their indulgence; but it would be rude not to luxuriate in the fleecy cotton comfort of new bed wear. Even, you know, in daylight hours. If there is any time of the year in which this slumminess is marginally acceptable, I'd say it is any date falling between the 24th December and the 2nd of January. So while this is still 'marginally acceptable' behaviour I've been doing lots of catching up with films and tv series with the dedication of a martyr.

On Christmas Day I watched Holiday with my parents (not that 'Holiday', Cameron Diaz's girlish snow tumbles and Jude Law's fluttering eyelashes were thankfully absent) and rather fell in love with it. I'm always a sucker for a Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn pairing but for me the brilliance of Holiday was down to the supporting characters. Lew Ayres as the brilliant but doomed alcoholic Ned and Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon as the Potters, who just about overshadow Grant and Hepburn with their wry comic coolness as a couple. This is my favourite scene from the film, when the lot of them escape a stuffy engagement reception by heading upstairs to Hepburn's old nursery to play Punch and Judy and practice acrobats. And naturally, to take turns kicking Grant on the arse, all of course, with champagne on tap and a heavy dose of silly humour. (Like all good parties, the interesting people have disappeared to congregate in some other room) This film really made me laugh. Maybe it was something to do with having my own Christmas Day glass of bubbly in hand but I think I was just surprised by how modern Holiday seems in its silly satirical humour. Serves me right for doubting that a film from 1938 couldn't be fresh and still make me guffaw today.