In the dark night that is very long ...

Sorry I'm late again posting - I'm now on my second lot of antibiotics in two weeks. Felt none too great over the weekend, and adding to the physical grief was the classic female line, running in my head: 'I can't be ill. I can't afford to be ill. It's Christmas and there's too much to do!' Christmas or not, there's always too much to do. I am a permanent tail-chaser - and not in the way a man would be ...

Sad news last week: the death of Oliver Postgate. How many of you out there went 'Aw!' - and how many of you can be dated, generationally, by which of his lovely creations most affected you when you were growing up? Are you a Bagpuss kitten? Not me: too late. Or a Clanger? Ditto. I'm a Noggin the Nog-o-Phile. 'In the lands of the north, where the black rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long, the Men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale.' That lovely mellifluous all-is-safe-children voice of Postgate's would lullingly transport you to the Northlands, to where Noggin the Nog ruled with his queen Nooka. Slowly and calmly, for there was all the time in the world, he told you of Thor Nogson, Noggin's friend; of Graculus, the great green bird and best of all, of Nogbad the Bad, greatest of villains, bwah hah hah! The stilted animation, the delightful sneers of evil on Nogbad's face, the bewildered innocence writ large on Noggin's and Thor Nogson's phizzogs, the harmless ice dragon with its self-pity, the exotic flying machine - all absolute delights, all utterly utterly English and cosy. Go to sleep, little ones, for in the Northlands and in all other lands, all is well. Oliver tells us so.