I need a 12 step programme

I’m totally addicted. It doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is, I can’t get myself off it.

Back in March I downloaded two series of the old version of Upstairs Downstairs to keep me entertained during my travels in the UK. I’ve always loved period dramas and I’m sure I must’ve come across the odd repeat while growing up but I’d been too young to see the original airing.

I watched a couple when my travelling lagged but I found the style of acting and dramatization very dated; hammy and overacted, embarrassing. But back in Bangkok I began to watch the odd episode in the evening and before I knew what had happened, I was hooked.

I forgot that they’d irritated me. For some of the visual preparation of the NF book, I can work while plugged into the next exciting episode in the lives of Bellamy family and their servants. And then I see in the following episode Elizabeth and her husband of six months are spending Christmas apart because their marriage is falling apart, and honestly, I’ve got to watch it, haven’t I? Before I know it, several more episodes have been viewed and then Lady Marjorie is sailing to America on the Titanic and well, I’ve got to see what happens, haven’t I?

Then there’s the singing. For days now I’ve been singing the theme tune, which, oddly I can’t reproduce on command, rather it just appears in my head to irritate me (and my family.) And there’s something in the phrasing that makes it morph into The Teddy Bears Picnic so I sing that over and over too…

I do think I may be losing my grip.

But oh, Hudson (Gordon Jackson) is just wonderful (and not hammy at all) and Thomas Watkins (a very PHWOAR young John Alderton)… the beautiful lust-after John Alderton Edwardian clothes… And god, the horror of the way they lived… I love it all.

Now it’s no longer just the evening but the morning as well and sometimes even during the day; I’m just watching one episode at a time… Honest. Well, mostly.

Husband has rechristened it ‘Crackstairs, Smackstairs.’