Hickory Dockery Dick

... so to speak

This has nothing to do with the entrancing enhancing 'garment' Michelle Dockery is wearing across there and everything to do with her comments on the Lost Art of Chivalry.

OK, perhaps that forthright 'Lady Mary' gaze did draw my eye to the article but my concern is for more pressing matters than whatever manners maketheth.

To be honest, I'm very worried that 'Downturn Abbey' is going to end up (or down) just that.

Sex on the mind : That's what the galactic audience for Downton have ~ when (not if) is Dan Stevens (as Matt Crawley) going to give that Dockery dish the seeing to she deserves and which Julian has been teasing us over. I'm getting dangerously close to switching channels on Fellowes' Folly and allegiancing myself to TOWIE where they know what the Birds and Bees get up to and lose no time buzzin' and a-tweetin'.

Quoth the mesmerising Lady M:

“Those old manners - such as men standing when women arrive at the dinner table ... ”

Ahem, Milady ... it's not the standing at the dinner table you want to worry about; it's the 'standing' in the boudoir. The rest will follow, I assure you.

So ... how are we going to get de-manned Mr Crawley back on the job, so speak? (Goodness the puns come thick and excruciating.)

My currrent bet is that:

Maman Crawley is shoved orf to minister to refugees abroad

Finds herself on a dhow to Corfu instead of the 12:15 to Brighton (that's bloody privatisation for you. Ricky Branson has much to answer for)

Takes an island tour from Acharavi to Kavos (' ... or was it Potamos? I know there was an 'os' in it somewhere. Aren't they next door to each other, anyway?)

Meets a darling gent from Perithia (played by Tom Conti) who has a pal who concocts THE most divine potions (see coupon in The Corfiot).

Crawley mater smuggles it back past Customs and into Matt's Weetabix.

WROOF!

Leaping ligaments, Batman! Look't that Crawley dude go!!

And I leave the rest to Fellowes to fill in the numbers and see that our hero gets his bit of en-tail, la belle Dickery is suitably docked, the hick press baron is sent packing, and everyone thrives.

There. The problems of the world suitably solved. Now back to the problems of mulching and the GM Diet, between which there seems little difference, so far as I can see.