"So this is Christmas...

...and what have you done?" John Lennon once interrogated.  Except it's an unnecessary question really, isn't it?  Ask anyone how their Christmas went and you'll generally get a shrug of the shoulders and an "it was alright - we didn't do much".  Sometimes people will say "we treated ourselves and went out for dinner", which is your cue to then say "wow...that's great...no mess and someone else does all the cooking!" to which they'll usually reply "yes, but it was a bit expensive and it wasn't like a proper home Christmas".  Soporific conversations like that take place every. single. year.  

This year, probably due to the "exceptionally mild weather we've been having; it's all those deodorants" (thanks Nan), I've heard a lot of people saying they don't feel 'Christmassy'.  I thought I would combat this apathy by listing exactly "what I have done" this Christmas, just to remind myself what feeling 'Christmassy' actually means.  This goes as follows:

• Listen to elderly relatives tell me about how I "didn't know what it was like to have to reuse things and go without at Christmas...not when there was a war on and everything was rationed".  Well...no, I don't.  I don't really think that's my fault, though; it's just a random accident of birth.  I could practise...if my Nan would only ration everything she gives me to eat that's gone out of date, that might be a good start!
• Listen to middle-aged relatives tell me about their problems with BT and Sky's customer service departments.
• Have fun telling kids what Christmas was like "in my day".  I'm in training for when I'm old; OK so I don't have a war to go on about, but when my friend's little girl was watching the Christmas edition of 'The Cube' I turned to her and said "When I was your age, Philip Schofield had brown hair".  She was suitably awed.
• Listen to swathes of parents moaning about how kids aren't grateful for what they get at Christmas; how they aren't appreciative of all the effort that goes into everything.  But why should they be?  From my limited observations, they're not taught to.  When I was little (again!) I only got presents at Christmas, and I had to write everybody who bought me something a 'thank-you' note, even if the present was something terrible like a bath towel with a picture of a cartoon face on it.  It is just a general observation, but it doesn't seem as though either of those aspects of childhood Christmases are all that common now.  
• Eat cheese.  Lots of it.  So much of it that I try to make myself feel better by saying "I'm going to give up cheese in the new year!" whilst knowing full well that by 3rd January I'll be enjoying a sandwich filled with Cheddar sliced so thickly it could be used to wedge the doors open at the Kremlin.  But it's all part of the fun, isn't it?
• Watch rubbish films.  This year I tried the latest 'Sherlock Holmes' which was really awesomely bad and affirmed why I don't usually bother with non Bob Holness-related 'blockbusters'.
• Eat chocolate.  Lots of it.  So much of it that I try...well, you know the drill.

The endless repetitions of Christmas

When I was sixteenish, I had a Christmas temp job in a handbag shop at the top of the High Street.  It was a pretty uninspiring job, on the whole.  I got trained in the properties of the dusty Samsonite suitcases situated at the back of the shop ("they're made of polyproplene, y'know...which is used in some types of aircraft so you can bet it'll withstand just about any impact") yet I was never asked about them.  I just worked on the till mostly, selling faux snakeskin handbags and things with tassels on them to bored members of the public.  Sometimes I got asked to tidy up the 'purse gondola' as a really special treat.

Accompanying me in these tasks was a "specially created mix tape" of background music which we were ordered to play by the shop's Head Office.  This tape consisted of four songs; Paul McCartney's 'Wonderful Christmas Time', Mud's 'Lonely This Christmas', Slade's 'Merry Christmas Everybody' and Elton John's 'Step Into Christmas'.  The effect of hearing these four songs on a constant loop from 8am until 6pm every Saturday from mid-November until Christmas itself now produces the same sort of effect as somebody hypnotised by Paul McKenna to dance like Michael Jackson every time they hear the opening bars of 'Thriller', in that as soon as I hear the opening bars of any of them I have to fight a desperate, all-consuming urge to beat the nearest person to death with a polyproplene Samsonite.  Or pack myself in one and have it thrown off the end of the pier (where it'd probably withstand the impact of hitting all that mud at the bottom of the Thames and I'd float listlessly back up again to the sound of 800 screaming children visiting 'Santa on the Pier').

So there's an example of a Christmas repetition I'm not exactly keen on.  But on the whole I can't really decide if I find the other repetitions (some would prefer to call them "traditions" I suppose) endearing or irritating.  Probably a bit of both.  I think the trick to their actual enjoyment is in not thinking too much about them or trying to intellectualise them, which unfortunately does leave me at a slight disadvantage!

Take school nativity plays, of which I saw a few this year due to the fact that I now have quite a few lovely children in my life.  Wonderful as it was to see them (and it really was!) I couldn't quite stop my mind wandering off to whether it's really a good idea to bring children up with the illusion that the Christmas story of 'Jesus being born in a stable by immaculate conception' is a given truth.  It's strange actually, in that for me that whole Jesus-being-born thing was always a weird story to believe even when I was a kid, but now I've heard it so many times that it's taken on a kind of surreal dreamlike quality, like someone's just been slurring it to you under the influence of LSD.  Mind you, the schools have obviously got tired of telling the straight story these days and insist on throwing disgruntled snowmen and supersonic lambs into the mix, just to spice it all up a bit.

Then there's the food.  I don't like mince pies all that much, but this year I found myself in the kitchen making Gordon Ramsay's 'crumble-topped extra-special mince pies' for reasons unknown, because I don't really know anyone else who likes mince pies all that much either.  But if you don't eat at least one in the period covering October to January, you are officially Weird.

There are some repetitions I do rather love, though.  Such as watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' and 'White Christmas'; films that don't ever get old or boring, and present-buying and wrapping and seeing people you actually quite like - Christmas makes you put in the effort, really, which can only be a good thing...if it didn't exist, we'd probably have had to invent it.

It's written in the stars!

Astrology has been part of my life from an early age.  Well, not exactly "part of my life"; that makes it sound as though I don't leave the house without consulting Russell Grant, Mystic Meg and Jonathan Cainer first.  I suppose it'd be more accurate instead to say I was exposed to astrology-type stuff from an early age.  My Mum used to study astrology and draw up people's birth charts for them...when my sisters and I would go to her house on a Sunday there'd be astrological paraphernalia all over the place.  Textbooks, notepads and compass-drawn charts with confusing squiggles and symbols all over them that somehow held the mystery to that person's exact personality.  As a child all this seemed quite magical; even though when I found out what my own star sign is (Leo) I didn't like it.  It seemed bossy and masculine, and I used to pretend I was Libra instead (which is ironic given the supposed nature of Leo personalities).

Given my love of stupid personality quizzes it seemed only inevitable that at some point I'd do an "Are You Like Your Star Sign?" type quiz, which whenever I do I've always found that I am "a typical Leo with a fine, balanced personality and a delight to know" (that's not just me blowing my own trumpet, honest, I did a quiz and it really said that!  Really!).  But I then took the same quiz for every other sign and found that I was also a "typical Capricorn", a "typical Sagittarian", a "typical Aries"...and so on.  So much for my being "unique and special" - which was how my star sign had been described!  I felt royally cheated.  Another astrologically-based quiz was bold enough to attempt describing me physically, as someone with "problem feet and can't-do-anything-with-it hair" (they must have seen my Facebook pictures).

But some people do take astrological signs very seriously.  My Nan, for example, says that the older she gets, the more she sees how true people are to their signs; conversations with her are always peppered with "well he's a Scorpio and everybody knows they're secretive buggers", or "she's the dullest person I ever met - typical Virgo" (don't worry; I've made those specific examples up!)  And once I was out with a friend and we got talking to a rather strange man who asked what our star signs were.  He approved of mine, but when my friend said she was Capricorn his eyes narrowed in fury.  "I HATE Capricorns!" he said, practically spitting venom at her as he spoke, and he walked off in a baffling huff (he must have been a Cancerian; I hear they're sensitive like that).

I've never taken astrology that seriously.  But I will admit to reading my stars every now and again, and especially at the start of a new year.  I'll promptly forget everything it said roughly five minutes after I've read it, but while I'm reading it it's...well, it's nice.  Because in the stars, everything's going to turn out alright, even when you're told it's going to be "a challenging year".  I can understand why some people use astrology like others use religion; as a comforting, mostly harmless, voice of reason.

(But then I would think that, as a Leo with an Aquarian rising sign).

A Christmas morning in Southend High Street

Christmas presents are rubbish if you haven't wrapped them up, right?  I think so, anyway.  I don't ask for much, just that my presents have been wrapped nicely - preferably with bows and ribbon and a whisper of glitter (but not so much that it gets all over your fingers) in complementary colours and a nicely-written gift card.  Naturally, because I demand such high standards from others, it's only fair that I offer exceptional gift-wrapping myself (it probably helps that I actually enjoy the whole 'wrapping presents' ritual every year, which takes me a good six hours and a couple of medicinal glasses of flavoured Bailey's - this year it's Biscotti flavour - to get it all finished.  But when it's done it's really, satisfyingly done...and Christmas isn't Christmas without beautifully wrapped presents, whether they're for me or not).

All this is the reason I found myself battling Southend High Street in the morning, to ensure I got enough tags, ribbons and bows to accompany my annual wrap-fest.  This is an important section of Christmas shopping I can't do online, just in case the paper's too flimsy and the ribbon too stringy or the tags too glittery.  I have to see it all properly before I can buy it (and now I'm aware I don't sound too sane, so I will move on with the story...)

The very first sight I encountered as I rounded the corner into the High Street was a man in a black bobble hat and orange shorts running as fast as he could, clutching a cluster of silver and shiny things, shooting past me in a frenzied flash.  He was being pursued by a man in a high-viz jacket but it was obvious he wasn't going to catch him...he was a bit older and fatter, plus he didn't really look like his heart was in the chase.  I stopped and watched them for a moment; so did a little boy who asked his Mum "why is that man chasing the other man?"  His Mum thought for a moment, then said "they're playing a Christmas game" which I thought was a great answer, and probably not far from the truth!

Next stop: Caffe Nero for a quick caffeine fix.  Well, I needed sustenance after such a harrowing scene.  I walked in; there was a long queue.  There's always a long queue in coffee shops at Christmas, it's The Law.  The reason, of course, is because every year all the coffee chains release a range of festive drinks it always takes an age to actually make.  The poor flustered man at the counter was working on his own that morning; my request for a plain black coffee instead of a Toffee Nut Latte or an Amaretto Hot Choc or a Mistletoe Mocha (I made that last one up, but it sounds nice doesn't it?) almost earned me a big sloppy kiss!

(Those incidents always remind me of the time I went to Debenhams' coffee shop with my sister and there was a huge poster up behind the counter advertising a new drink called a 'Millionaire's Mocha'.  My sister looked at the poster and said to the lady at the till "I think I'll try one of those Millionaire's Mochas, please".  The lady, who looked all of about ninety, gave her a careworn, world-weary look and said "What's that, love?"  My sister pointed to the poster and she sighed, then shouted across to the kitchen "What's in that fluffy new drink we're selling now?"  Nobody really seemed to know, but a few squirts of canned cream, freeze-dried chocolate and toffee pieces later and my sister had something resembling the drink on the poster...if Picasso had painted it.  She tasted the drink, said it was less "millionaire's mocha" than "penny pincher's dishwater" and we laughed like drains about it for ten minutes).

Coffee over with, it was off to the gift-wrap shop where I purchased everything I needed; the man ringing everything up at the till said "Going to wrap some Christmas presents, are you?" and I replied with the only logical answer I could think of, which was "Yes".


It was an eventful morning, on the whole.

Customer Service at Christmas...a fable for our times

It's been one of "those" weeks.  One of "those" weeks involves an inordinate amount of interaction with our local friendly service providers; usually something I try to avoid save for a pleasant smile at the checkout.

I blame Christmas, personally, and all the needy people in my life who selfishly demand the dangerous combination of good presents and my time over the festive period.  This involves my having to order a load of presenty-stuff online (I don't do "normal" Christmas shopping after a particularly horrendous and traumatic trip to Lakeside about three days before Christmas a few years ago) and it also involves my having to call various restaurants and book tables for dinner.

And when I'm forced to do those things, this is what tends to happen...

Encounter One: Customer Service Rep at UPS Courier Services


Me: Oh, hello.  I just popped out for five minutes and I saw one of your drivers called round.  They literally only left the card a few minutes ago so I wondered if it might be possible for you to get in touch with them and let them know I'm home now, and will be all day?

Him: (after a few long seconds' silence, gruff mumble) No.  S'not possible.

Me: (after waiting a few moments to maybe be asked for details, or if I'd like to rearrange delivery or something generally helpful like that) Oh.  OK, then.  'Bye.

Encounter Two: Cashier at WHSmith


Me: Hi.  As I came in I set your security alarm off by the doors.  I just wanted you to know I haven't stolen anything! - do you need to check my bag before I go?

Her: (stares half-blankly, half-scared at me as though I'd just spoken to her in Chinese).

Me: (starting to feel a bit stupid because I'm getting no response at all) ...you know, because I don't want to get chased by your security guard on the way out!

Her:  (staccato monotone) You won't.

Me: OK, then.  Thanks for your help (I was - but you'll be pleased to hear it was all fine in the end).

Encounter Three: Local restaurant

Me: Hi, I was just wondering if you had a table for four next Saturday, for about seven-thirty?

Him: (flatly) No, we're booked.

Me: Have you got any other times available for that evening?

Him: (just as flatly) I don't know.

Me: Would it be possible to check?

Him: (sighs) I know we haven't got anything after five o'clock.  I don't have to check that.  OK?

Me: Right.  Thanks anyway.

I ended each of these encounters wondering two things: one; why am I so stupid and meek in not taking to task (even slightly) these people who speak to me like a squelchy decapitated earwig they've just found in their apple turnover, and two: why is genuine, common-sense and just plain nice customer service so rare?  It's not as though I don't ask nicely.

Of course, as we get closer to Christmas and the "season of goodwill" works its magic I suspect those three and countless others like them will be transformed into paragons of helpfulness; their rosy red cheeks gleaming with festive cheer.  But blink and you'll miss it...it's like Santa Claus in that it only happens once a year and only the seriously naive believe it even exists in the first place.