On Christmas Day in the morn-ing.

Christmas Day is all about surprises. The tradition started, so the story goes, with the awkward astonishment of a child being born without any hanky panky between the parents - the traditional way to start a family. The day has since become a day celebrating not only the miracle birth but also the economic miracle of  Christmas Shopping and the surprising yield of till totals in the Oxford Street stores on the previous Saturday.  But, of course, the surprise we all look forward to most is that of our kiddies when they have frantically ripped the paper wrapped round a popular toy as seen on television. At least that was what I thought until this morning. As an excited child, I used to wake early on the big day to search for a large football sock stuffed with rustling goodies that would be at the bottom of my bed somewhere. Today I was awoken early by the somewhat surprising cracks of thunder that followed flashes of brilliant electric white that lit up my flat like a Christmas tree. After another week of high tides inland, a week when the end of the world was nigh, the advent of an surprisingly unseasonal electrical storm, traditionally a feature conceived in the balmy hot weather of summer, has made me feel uneasy. I am used to the light drizzle and dank mild of Christmas but not rattling window pains. It isn't just me that should be experiencing feelings of disquiet. I hope it is the executives, board members and major shareholders of the big business that encourage voluminous CO2 emissions who are looking out of their Hadley Wood or Weybridge mansions over the saturated landscape and feel an uneasiness in pit of their stomachs. Something is up.

Brad Pitt is Chanel 5

I heard his voice; I shuddered with the gravitas - the deep resonance, the pauses, the inflections.  I reached for the phone and my credit card expecting to see heartbreaking images of poor people dying because of some easily treatable condition such as poverty. But no, Brad Pitt, in a fine example of bathos, is the new voice of Channel 5, sorry, Chanel - Shan - elle - French, you see. What a donut. He follows in the footsteps of Anthony Hopkins - one time co-star and now, it seems, mentor - in trashing a classy reputation by doing a TV commercial for some puerile bollocks.. I expect to see him on the next I Was A Celebrity Once Please Help Me.