the brilliantly leaping gazelle

One thing I hate about christmas – and there are many – are christmas dinners.

This requires some context, as technically, it isn’t the dinner itself, but who I eat it with that gives rise to some uncharitable thoughts.

Now this one, although it originated in my childhood, has become so much a part of my psyche that it applies not only to christmas dinner but to any meal, where an elderly person I hardly know, eats in front of me.

Every Christmas, from when I was old enough to be aware of such things and up until she didn’t, my great aunt Dora would come to stay with us for the duration and boy, did it feel like we were under duress. She was about as child-friendly as a scorpion and just as venomous. Me and my brother hated her visiting, it gave us another reason to hate christmas. I doubt that my father had much time for her and to make matters worse, I now know that my mum wasn’t overly fond of her either.  But we were all she had in England and – in your best Eastenders growl – ‘she was family’

Anyway Dora wore dentures and was not only not the best at applying them securely, but was seemingly unconcerned when they wriggled free either. This resulted in her being a messy eater and because of this that me and brother would try to sit in the seat next to where she would always sit for dinner well in advance of any meal. Even if just before the meal you were bursting to go to the toilet, you’d try and style it out until the meal had started and then go. I can’t begin to describe the lengths me and my brother went to not to face her at meals, but also to try and make sure the other one did.

Anyway one Christmas dinner – well in my recollection it is – for some reason I was facing her. Naturally my brother was solicitous with the gravy, asking her if she wanted more, as indeed I would’ve been had the roles been reversed. I was sat directly opposite her and had to pretend that her eating doesn’t now make me think of Mr. Creosote, but then was just disgusting. Mums cooking was bad enough as it was, without her adding to the chaos.

It was only then that I became aware of the facial hair on her chin, I must’ve blocked out that particular horror, but at the point I remember noticing was the point some the gravy escaped her mouth and began slowly snaking around her hairs, like an especially languid snake. It was as never ending as it was revolting. Meals with her at the table had been bad enough before, but now they were infinitely worse, the waiting, the dread, always waiting, never quite sure if this was the one. Meals now became like a culinary Russian roulette.

Thankfully, she died soon after that.

I know that may sound  harsh and a other more condemnatory epithets, but honestly, when I was ten the only feeling I had at hearing of her death was one of relief that I wouldn’t have to watch her eat.

My mum now lives in a sheltered housing complex, and the managers wife cooks a christmas dinner, which by all accounts is rather great, and to which she always invites me. However, whilst the prospect of watching one elderly person messily eat was bad enough, the thought of sitting amidst hordes of elderly strangers eating is hardly appetising.

One of the things I hate about christmas – and there are many -are Christmas songs.

Before my brain injury curtailed my shopping capability, which meant I was no longer able to troll about the West End and to faff aimlessly in Covent Garden as I used to, one way in which I measured my success in christmas shopping was by how long I’d managed to avoid Slades ‘ perennially awful So here it is, Merry Christmas’. Noddy Holders scream of ‘It’s Christmas’ was proof enough that everyone wasn’t ‘having fun’ as was rather ambitiously claimed, but instead suffering aural torture.

I was forcibly reminded of this the other day I had to get a black cab and the cabbie had the radio tuned into a radio station playing nothing but Christmas records. For the only time in my life I wished that they were playing rock, or better still, nothing at all. However, one thing you can do with a cab is ask them to turn it off. But at the barbers today, when he was shaving me with a cut-throat razor, I thought of the old adage ‘discretion is the wisest part of valour as I considered the wisdom of asking the barber to turn off the television that was tuned to ‘Magic FM’ It was playing a ‘sleighlist’ of Christmas songs, which wasn’t so named because listening to them all would set one off on a murderous rampage. Instead with forlorn ambition matched by dogged persistence, it was hoped that pampered pop stars, singing sentimental tosh about a reality that no-one in the history of ever has experienced, might induce one to lose their reason and believe in such trumpery moonshine.

Perhaps that’s why it’s called ‘Magic FM’

One thing I hate about christmas – and there are many – is having pretending to children that Santa Claus exists.

This was something I’d managed to avoid for most of my adult life, by the rather cunning ruse of not having children. But now I share a house with a couple who have a delightfully excitable daughter, who, a couple of weeks ago, sat down noisily on the sofa next to me, arms folded and a face like thunder.

Being highly perceptive, I at once deduced that something was amiss and enquired what it was. “They haven’t posted my letter to Santa yet and he won’t know what I want. ” She paused. “And they haven’t addressed it properly, so he’ll never get it, and anyway, he doesn’t exist because a boy at school told me.” This pronouncement was accompanied with facial expression that clearly indicated an immediate rebuttal of this was required. Again with the perception! Sheldon would be so proud!

Much like naked Twister, this put me in a difficult position; on the one hand, I didn’t want to lie to her, but on the other, there in front of me was her beseechingly pleading face. What was the more important consideration in that moment?

Of course I could’ve said, “ Actually, he doesn’t exist, it’s your parents who buy all the presents, they just get you to write Santa a letter so they know what to get you. It’s a tough lesson I know but you’ll thank me one day. Probably not right now though.”

But then that would’ve been me merely channeling my childhood skepticism about Santa onto her. Even though as a child I had no idea what skepticism was, I never believed in Santa. Even then I knew it was my parents. The logic and reason of that were contained in the poorly wrapped offerings under the artificial tree were proof. I mean, would Santa give an eight-year-old boy a pair of socks?

So instead I said, “ Well only a few know exactly where he lives, but if they address it to Santa Claus, North Pole then the post people there send it to the post people in Greenland and they send it on to a remote village near the Arctic Circle and the postmen there know where Santa lives and they give him his mail. That’s what I heard.”

I was tempted to add, “But who do you believe, me or a boy at your school?

But then, if her parents hadn’t left the letter lying about in the first place, the whole farrago could’ve been avoided.

One of the things I hate about Christmas – and there are many – is the way in which television over the Christmas period has become so unutterably bad, it’s almost as if the commercial broadcasters have given up. It was never like this when I was a boy; I’d flick through the Christmas Radio Times, marker pen expectantly hovering over the page to circle things I’d want to watch. Everyone in my family did, knowing even as we did so, we’d never watch most of them. The main thing was to optimistically imagine that you might, until unexpected visitors and dutiful visits got in the way. Even now I can fondly recall buying packs of three-hour blank videotapes because there was just so much good stuff on. It was as if they’d been holding back the good stuff – rather like a host serving cheap wine until the liggers and relatives they never see have gone and then gets the good stuff out. And quite often BBC2 would show a season of films, over consecutive nights featuring a body of work by an actor or director. One year they did a season of Basil Rathbone’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’ films, another they did a season of Billy Wilder films. And let us not forget the Christmas specials!

But that, alas was long ago in my youth, when the christmas Radio Times was thinner on account of there being only four channels. That was when we had the Christmas edition of ‘Top of the Pops on at 2pm on BBC1 on christmas day, before a Bond film at 3.10 over on ITV!

That was before satellite television and the opening up of the market, to give us, the viewer, even more choice. My annual christmas ITV rant, is I like to think – but those who hear it may not agree – a considered yet restrained critique of ITV and other broadcasters who lay in the pages beyond the listings for big four (and Channel 5). One of my themes is that as advertising revenues have become so diffused – many more get a slice of a shrinking pie – less money is spent on original programming. Look at ITV’s line up for Christmas day. It’s almost as if they’re in cahoots with Amazon Prime, Netflix, and oh dear, don’t get me started…!

And another thing that annoys me about chistmas – and there are a lot – is mistletoe.

Or rather, being kissed under the mistletoe.

Oh alright then, the real reason why I don’t like mistletoe is because those slightly awkward teenage snogs everyone had under the mistletoe?

They always happened to other people. I mean presumably I could if I’d’ve wanted to, at parties where alcohol helped loosen more than tongues but even as a teenager, it was an unshakeable belief with me – and trust me, my belief did a lot of shaking! –  that teenage girls, or a tad older than me, were just as clueless about  things as I was. By the time I was in my twenties the damage had been done. I blame my parents for this, because they had deeply unattractive female fiends, some of them looked more like Edward G Robinson than Mrs. Robinson! – as a hormonal teenager I could only imagine of the fleshy pleasures Benjamin enjoyed – and who had given their daughters an unfortunate genetic inheritance; I was a hormonal teenager, and as hormonal male teenagers are wont to do, I wasn’t always thinking with my brain. Not something I had much control over,  I blame evolution!

Naturally, I was as fine a figure of manhood then as indeed I am now.

So how was it that my bells were never jingled?

And another thing that annoys me about chistmas – and there are a lot – are Christmas cards.

It is my custom to make homemade christmas cards not because I believe in any religion – it’s just fairy stories for grown ups – but more so that when someone gives me a christmas card I don’t look like a bellend and give them nothing back. My reasoning is that I’ll give cards at christmas, but on my terms, and as I am an atheist and because most all of the atheist christmas cards I can find on the web are either on the crude and vulgar spectrum, or not good really so I make my own. Well, it makes sense to me, but not, however, to a relative of my partner my who finds them offensive. This, I might add, for no other reason that I find it a constant source of amusement, is a women who keeps a Geiger Counter in her house. To anyone who doesn’t know what a Geiger counter is, it isn’t something that measures how fashionable you are, but rather something to measure how radioactive or not something is. So the temptation for me to send her a present from the gift shop at Sellafield is overwhelming, aside from the small fact that as a nuclear power station, it doesn’t have a gift shop.

Anyway, the point is that I am an atheist. Everyone I know knows this. I make no secret of it. So therefore it follows that people who send me christmas cards with depictions of religious imagery on them are causing me deliberate offence?

 Another one of the many things that annoy me about Christmas – and believe me there are many – is the way in which Scrooge in Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ is portrayed as a mean spited cantankerous misanthrope, who is made to see the error of his ways and immediately resolves to be a kinder, nicer person.

Scrooge can be seen as proof of the redemptive effect of Christmas on even those thought beyond redemption, a belief that chimes perfectly with a Christian narrative that every sinner, no matter how full of sin he might be, is capable – though gods help of course – of salvation! Or he could just be terrified into being something he isn’t.

I mean Scrooge is a mean spirited cantankerous misanthrope, but that’s precisely why I think he’s so great! Much like Basil Fawlty, one wouldn’t want to be in their company for long, but as a character who entertains, well really!

Anyone in those times who’d lived that long and was engaged in the business he was and wasn’t a mean spirited cantankerous misanthrope was clearly a demented wrongcock of the first order. My sympathy for Scrooge is in no way related to the fact, uncharitably repeated by my partner, that I bear an uncanny resemblance to Jim Carey’s portrayal of Scrooge in Robert Zemeckis’s film adaptation of “A Christmas Carol’

Yes, granted, it has been pointed out by others that as cartilage continues to grow as one gets older and as the nose is mage up of cartilage and being how my chin has a rather unfortunate Bruce Forsyth thing going on, my chin and my nose are going to meet at some point. My brother hasn’t been the only person to try and squeeze them both together to work out what I’d look like if they did.

So much so, in fact that someone has even had the temerity to suggest that I could work as a children’s entertainer on beaches impersonating Mr. Punch!

I would’ve included an image of Carey as Scrooge to illustrate the point, but as a gesture Scrooge himself would’ve approved of, I couldn’t find free images, so I didn’t.

One of the many things that annoy me about Christmas – and there are many, some of which I’ll share with you in the coming days – is the way which people behave as if Christmas is some sort of surprise, something that sneaks up on them, and catches them unawares. As opposed to what it actually is; something that happens every year, at the same time, long before they were born, each year they’ll be alive and will continue long after they’re dead. And it’s not as if there isn’t any advance warning either! In what universe are people who say christmas crept up on them living? Maybe christmas is the killer in a slasher film and someone in the remote cabin has heard noise in the forest and has gone to explore? Or maybe they’re as stupid as people who say variations on ‘christmas came around fast this year’, as if there’s some kind of calendar accelerator.

It’s almost as if there’s a monthly global type lottery to establish if this will be the month to host Christmas; each draw takes place on the first day of the months and starts with two balls, a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ ball too determine if Christmas is to take place this month.

If the ‘no’ ball is drawn, then it’s a rollover until the next month until a ‘yes’ is drawn and then all the days in that month, starting from the fifteenth to end of it, are entered into the draw and whichever is pulled, then that’s christmas day. There would of course be a gap between chistmas’s; the draws for the next one would start six months after the last one.

Each country could have their own draw!

Wouldn’t that be fun! Imagine the nervousness of retailers, as they’d have to be permantley prepared for Christmas to be revealed! The anxiety they’d feel would be surpassed only by the frenzied mayhem of consumers in an increasingly panicked state, fearful of supermarket shelves not being super, their presents not being that presentable.

Or maybe, just maybe, most people wouldn’t care, would just go on with their daily routine and carry on as normal.

Here’s my favourite Christmas joke:

Why does Santa have a bulging red sack?

Because Christmas only comes once a year!

After opening the presents – a good haul this year – I went out for a walk here in Southwold where I’m spending Christmas. Possibly because of the fact of me being woken at 5.30am by the next door neighbours alarm, possibly because of me me having had pretty much a whole bottle of champagne the night before and going to bed at 2am, possibly a combination of the two might have resulted in in my interpretation of what befouled my eyes on the walk  being more caustic than it might otherwise have been.

Because everywhere I looked there seemed to be people wearing presents they’d just opened. Clothes that were obviously having their first public outing, footwear that carefully avoided puddles or mud, and this is the important bit, the wearers trying to brazenly pretend that their not showing off their new gear. Any notion of colour co-ordnation is gone – if it’s been opened on Christmas Day it’s worn it seems.

And me being where I am, the amount of not so old men wearing red corduroy trousers and mustard colour socks was breathtaking. As were teenagers looking cool by wearing the latest tech gear – the EarBuds seemed especially prevalent – and men who should’ve known better trying to look cool but who had reached that level of financial comfort that they can actually afford the tech. Brands abounded, probably worn by bounders.

And this brings me onto my final gripe and it’s a perennial one. The sales start tomorrow, so what is the point of buying something at a more expensive price simply for the sake of it being opened on one day and not the next. This makes no sense to me, but I guess it’s how capitalism works, convincing us to buy something at one price, only to sell to us the same item at a lower price the next. Why people don’t give a card saying ‘This is what I’m to buy you in the sales’ bearing a ‘photo of said item,  I don’t know.

As for the women, well in this post Weinstein world we live I don’t think it wise for me to comment on them and….ooh is that the sound of a bottle of champagne being opened? It was! Duty calls…