A good reason not to decide to
become a collector is that it will eventually become an obsession, especially
when you have an addictive personality and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. There
are worse things to become addicted to I suppose, apart from smoking I have no
vices; I rarely drink alcohol these days and my relationship with drugs was
never serious. However, I doubt very much that a self help group exists to deal
with addiction to A Christmas Carol.
As I feel uncomfortable
watching, reading, or listening to the story during the year (it still annoys
me when you get a Christmas episode of The Simpsons in
the summer) I am confined to the time between December 1st and
January 6th to consume as many different versions as possible while
still watching the old favourites, (The Muppets, Alistair Simm, Albert Finney
and Kelsey Grammer among others) but the trouble is that there are simply too
many versions and variations as I also count parodies and updates of the story
such as Scrooged.
So far this year I have
watched three of the mentioned favourites (Alistair is still to be watched)
along with a Campbell Playhouse radio production originally broadcast on
Christmas Eve 1939 starring Lionel Barrymore and narrated by Orson Wells, and a
CBS Mystery Theatre radio production from 1975. YouTube has a huge array of
films and productions that I have yet to watch (the days of the ten minute
video limit on YouTube videos seems such a stone age memory) although I did
find a spare six minutes out of my busy schedule to watch Scrooge, Or
Marley’s Ghost, the first ever film adaptation from 1901, or what is
left of it. In addition to currently being into my annual reading of the book I
have also read one of the many sequels to it.
Although this started out as a
hobby I am growing increasingly anxious about completing the set, even though I
know deep down that I will probably not live long enough to do so, even if I watched
or listened to a different version every day of the year. I’m going through a
small depressive episode at the moment which doesn’t help, but I find that a
dose of Victorian morality does me the world of good, like an alcoholic taking
a hearty swig. Part of me is toying with the idea of a modern day rewrite
because when you scratch beneath the surface very little has changed in
society. We still have the same issues that Dickens wrote about; street
violence, homelessness, rich/poor divide, public drunkenness, prostitution, and
begging, and although we now have welfare and have done away with debtors’
prisons and the workhouse we have food banks and extortionate loan companies
praying on the poor and vulnerable. The gin palaces frequented by the poor and
ignorant are no longer around, but they are now represented by a JD Wetherspoon
in every town, proof that some standards have actually gone downhill.
===
My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle
for 99p a month (link)
Listen to The Sunday Alternative
here
My Sherwood Radio archive is here, why not listen and
donate?
All donations received via the PayPal button above
will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films,
documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no
obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the
pot.
