I shouldn't laugh, coz it's no laughing matter. You know some people used to think they drove better with a few drams in them? Well, this New Year gave me pause for thought. There was a lot of traffic on the roads after The Bells. The thing was that I had never seen everyone driving with much care and consideration. I suspect they were driving safely coz they didn't want involved in any accidents that might resulted in them being breath-tested. This morning things were back to normal with folk going through red lights, etc. Some of these folks are such good drivers they get in collisions with trains.  I say drinking and driving is no laughing matter coz it killed my grandpa's brother. Multiple millions of Germans had failed to finish him off when he went into action as paratrooper during the Second World War but one Yank did for him in 1957.

I forgot to run a teaser last week reminding you that the 2025 Book of the Year was being announced today. So, if you please, internal drumroll sound in your head. After a strong start to the year although the general quality of the books reviewed was good, the shortlist came down to only three titles. The first contender was SAS Operation Storm about the defence of the Omani fishing village of Mirbat in 1972. For an SAS book to make the shortlist is unusual because most are what I term War Porn. Co-author Roger Cole was there as an SAS trooper while Richard Belfield is a skilled writer. Between them they delved into a rich vein of information. The second contender was The Korean War by old favourite, and old soldier, Tim Carew. This book from 1967 was a joy to read with the often grim stories from the Commonwealth contingent brightened with sudden splashes of humour. Number Three in the running was Robert Kershaw's balanced and insightful look at the 1944 fighting in Arnhem through the prism of one street. At the end of the day it came down to Mirbat or Korea. The tie- breaker was a stupid claim that the Strikemaster jets at Mirabet were armed with submachine guns. So, Korea wins.

I think Thanksgiving is a great idea. A public holiday where all you have to do is count your blessings and be grateful. Here in Canada there's usually a big family gathering and meal. Our taxpayer funded state broadcaster CBC has a new, and usually crap, call-in programme called Just Ask Me in which dim members of the public phone in their opinions in the belief that they constitute a question to a subject expert. An interesting idea very poorly executed. Anyway, the expert was a woman and the subject was how to please everyone at Thanksgiving Dinner. The problem was she hated Thanksgiving and thought anyone who celebrated it was a colonialist fascist. With such a party pooper on the end of the line, hardly anyone phoned in. Whoever booked this fantastically stupid boorish woman for the call-in should have been fired. And whoever hired the booker, also obviously a stupid person, should go as well and quite possibly their boss too should be terminated well for being so  chronically incompetent. Whatever happened to the old The Buck Stops Here? 

I hadn't realised how brilliant Lord Mountbatten was until I saw the wartime information film Burma Victory. Not. The whole film was a Mountbatten vanity project. I'm not sure now that the real architect of the British Empire 's victory of the Japanese in Burma, William Slim, even got a mention. Slim at least knew his left from his right. Which is more than can be said for the odious Mountbatten. It has been said, with only some exaggeration, that Mountbatten's South East Asia Command headquarters in Ceylon, had more personnel than the 14th Army in Burma. But the Americans liked working with a Real Life English Dook. And maybe that counted for something. By the way, I understand there are two versions of Burma Victory. One celebrates the reconquest of Burma. The American version celebrates how swell they and their Chinese allies are.

I've seen a couple of photos of young women murdered in Scotland over the past few months - obviously plucked from so-called social media. I can't work out whether the girls have been victims of badly botched plastic surgery or have used some kind of creepy inadequate Internet photo filter that for some reason they think makes them look more attractive. Now, I know what's considered pretty changes from decade to decade but when did the bad botox horror look come in? Is there are crazy incompetent plastic surgeon working for dead cheap in central Scotland? I hope not. I hope what a saw was down to flawed photo software.