On noise, the Princess and the Politicians, TV drama and annoying adverts.

The roadworks on our street have progressed to almost outside our house. Consequently from being more quiet than usual because of their being less traffic, and in particular fewer big lorries, it has suddenly become more noisy. Heavy machinery clunks continuously, digging trenches, transporting huge pipes, filling in trenches and generally making a row. Not to mention the parking problems, which don’t affect us directly but do affect anyone coming to visit. The people in the house opposite are in danger of finding themselves with their car trapped on their drive or not being able to get it knot the drive, depending on where it is as the works progress further along! I just hope all this kerfuffle actually solves the drainage problem.

Looking at news reports of the NATO summit and fancy receptions at Buckingham Palace with, apparently, jokes at Mr Trump’s expense, I notice that Princess Anne has been rolled out into the public eye. As a rule she has kept a low profile for a good while now, quietly getting on with her royal jobs without making or demanding any kind of fuss. And suddenly there she is, being gestured at by her mother to join the meet and greet line-up, getting into conversation with foreign dignitaries and sharing a joke with them. Is she replacing her brother Andrew to some extent and is her good reputation being used to repair public perceptions damage? Or is that just me me seeing deviousness where none exists?

Meanwhile Philip Schofield, once a children’s TV presenter, now a morning chat show host, appears to have become apology-demander in chief. First he nagged Jeremy Corbyn into apologising - not for the first time regardless of what the media might imply - for anti-Semitism. Now he has made Boris Johnson apologise for comparing Muslim women in burkas to letter boxes. Who will be next? I would like to volunteer Rees-Mogg but that would be to give him too much importance.

Partly in an attempt to avoid seeing too much election coverage, but also because it is worth seeing, we have been watching an Italian TV series, La Mafia uccide solo d’estate, a very good black comedy series set in 1979 Palermo, Sicily. It mixes real fact with fiction. Real-life mafiosi are featured, as are real-life mafia-related events, mixing old television footage with the modern series to underscore the serious stuff beneath the comedy. And, as it is in part a coming-of-age drama, they use a fantastic bunch of juvenile actors. Well worth watching!

The downside of watching this series is that it is available on More Four, or All four, or whatever the catch-up for Channel 4 is called. This means that we are subjected to adverts. Lots of adverts, splitting the programme quite arbitrarily. Occasionally on American series, seen in the UK without commercial breaks, you can almost see where the breaks have been programmed in, usually at a natural scene-change point. In the series we have been watching the breaks just happen, sometimes mid conversation, not even at a cliffhanger moment.

And there are masses of adverts for gambling - always with a soppy-voiced reminder to “Gamble responsibly” and to “keep gambling fun”. I find myself growing quite huffy and stuffy about this and stating over and over again that advertising for gambling should be banned. You no longer see commercials for cigarettes on television, and gambling can be just as addictive as tobacco.

Another frequent feature at the moment is the John Lewis Christmas advert, which reportedly cost something like £6million to produce. Some people find it charming but you can really go off a story about a little dragon who sets fire to everyone’s Christmas, even if he miraculously manages to reform and learn to control his incendiary nature in time to set the christmas pudding alight. Other people are grumbling that it is, if not actual plagiarism, extremely similar to an already published children’s story about a small girl and an impetuous, almost uncontrollable dragon!

In fact, I am sick of Christmas adverts altogether. Marks & Spencer have a singularly silly one about choosing a jumper to wear to the work’s Christmas disco! “Go jumpers for Christmas!” Really! Who wears a jumper to a Christmas disco?

Oh dear, I seem to be turning a little Scrooge-like" So here’s a link to an article about a much less expensive advertising campaign.  That’s the way to do Christmas - shop local, give everyone a screwdriver as a present - the advert is for a family-run hardware shops.