Other than giving birth …

… I share a lot in common with Victoria Coren Mitchell’s view of the Mother-of-all-awful-years.

But awful year or not, at least we can be amused by her source of inspiration (or, wearing my current Grinch persona, we can once Christmas is over!) …

quote-my-inspiration-has-always-been-jeanne-calment-a-frenchwoman-who-smoked-and-drank-every-victoria-coren-mitchell-58-70-51

Postscript#1: Unsurprisingly, I don’t really have much in common with Coren Mitchell. After all, she’s an elite poker player, successful writer, highly amusing TV personality and, ahem, muse to men-of-a-certain-age, and all that I can do well is to count fish (commercial fishermen would disagree) and I haven’t actually done that since about 2005!

Postscript#2: In the Observer article on which she tweets, she cites Victoria Wood’s death as the saddest of the year: “… take your pick whose fall upset you most … for me the deepest cut was Victoria Wood, that sparkling creature of joy and laughter“. I agree, recalling from posts passim: “There has been a heavy toll taken of performers recently, but, for me, hers is the most egregious loss. Too soon and too young. A genuine laugh-out-loud writer and a comedian …“. (Of course thousands will have read Coren Mitchell’s comment on Wood; 11 people read mine – and that includes the author – so not much in common there either).