(With apologies to my brother)

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 27 December 2006 23:34:58

... who nicked my material, so here I'm nicking his thoughts on popular seasonal tunes.

'Well I wish it could be Christmas every day'. Have they really thought this through? I mean, you'd have to give presents every day. How would you buy anything when the shops were all closed? And you'd never go to work, so you wouldn't have any dosh to buy anything anyway.... or maybe every day would be a paid holiday - that sounds good but I expect an economist type could explain why it may be problematic.

Well, around 8.30am on Christmas morning we were briefly convinced of the merits of vegetarianism when we realised we had to extract the giblets from the goose (and surely breeding creatures with all their innards bundled together inside a polythene bag has to be cruel?) Hearing the swearing coming from downstairs, I volunteered to have a go as my hands are smaller than Spike's. After a brief, unsuccessful tug, during which my hands became greasy, and consequently could get no purchase on the bag, I remembered having seen 'Merry Christmas, Mr Bean', and although I was not yet dressed and so was not wearing a watch, I deemed it prudent to remove my wedding ring before delving deep into the goose. Despite all my animal-mad childhood years watching All Creatures Great and Small, I'd never really thought before about how Christopher Timothy must have suffered for his art. Eventually, I succeeded with the aid of a spoon, and our giblet-free goose was indeed cooked, and very yummy it was too, and an enjoyable Christmas dinner was had by all - me, Spike, Spike's Mum and our friend Steve (my life is full of Steves/Stevens/Stephens, though less than it used to be).

Then a chilled-out Boxing Day, including a walk across the park which we had never before visited, despite living opposite it for the past four and a half months. Taking turns pushing a not-so-little old lady in a wheelchair up the hill was good exercise! On a clear day, you can see St Paul's, the Gherkin and all the other tall buildings in the City from there, but yesterday was not a clear day; it was the kind of mild, damp weather that Christmas usually is in South-East England. If you're lucky you get a beautiful cold, crisp, frosty day which does at least feel seasonal, but the only snowy Christmas I remember was in the Big Winter of 1981/2, and that was old snow which was still lying rather than nice new leave-the-first-set-of-footprints stuff.

Today, I'd drawn the short straw and had to go to w*rk. It wasn't quite the laid-back day I'd hoped for, but it's over now and I don't have to go back to work till next year! For the last two nights, mother-in-law has had our bed and we have been sleeping on a sofabed in the sitting room, but tonight we have the run of the place again - and I don't have to get up in the morning :-D One thing we haven't managed this year is our annual drive round spotting houses whose exteriors have been decorated by people with less taste than Lembit Opik, but all in all it's been a good Christmas, and there's more stuff to look forward to over the coming days and weeks to beat those January blues!

Knowing that times have been hard for many recently, I hope you have all had a peaceful and blessed Christmas, and I wish you a similar New Year.