FatuousBeing the dutiful husband that I am I will be dropping Mrs Fatuous off to her Christmas do soon. I will then hang around until the party is over.
I thought, “why not go to the cinema to kill time.”
Why not? Because there are bugger all good films on near Christmas. Seriously, the best film on offer is Sherlock Holmes 2. I despair.
I may spend the night recreating a real Christmas classic by parking in an underground car park and listening to Run DMC instead.
As a youngster I used to have a recurring dream where I would turn up to school not wearing any trousers. I’d panic until I’d realise it was only a dream and then go back to sleep.
Does somebody want to have a word with the girl from the M & S adverts that walks around in her bra and pants, whilst twiggy and co are fully clothed, that not only is it not a dream but it was actually filmed and shown around the country. Maybe she wakes up in a cold sweat having dreamt she turned up to work wearing trousers?
The build up to Christmas really kicked off with the adverts. Not the fancy department store adverts (I may do something about one of those tomorrow) but your really classy numbers.
Firstly there was Victor Kiam and whatever shaving based nonsense he bought the company for. Shaving beards, lady gardens and fluff off jumpers was his game and he bought the company to play that game. Nobody every mentions the guy who cared so little for the company he sold it to Victor in the first place and he certainly never took out his own range of adverts.
Then there were the adverts for the range of smelly stuff from Yardley. I was surprised to discover Yardley are still going and yes you can still buy lily of the valley. Yardley must be getting twitchy though, their customer base was old enough in the 70s, there can’t be many of them left by now.
Who have they passed the nasty Christmas advert mantle onto now? There’s Iceland and their “celebrity” “food” adverts. That’s about it unless there are still people stupid enough to think that what blankets really need are sleeves. Of course there are still people stupid enough that the Slanket will continue to be advertised.
Big toy stores and department stores in major cities often have massive Christmas displays in their shop windows. These are part showboating and part enticement to enter the store. I don’t hate those.
What I do hate are inappropriate shops feeling they have to join in too. No sooner have the Halloween decorations been removed from our local opticians then up go a handful of half-hearted Christmas decorations. Who the hell wants prescription glasses for Christmas? Do you have to let Santa know you are -2.0 in your left eye?
Remember kids, seeing stuff is for life not just for Christmas.
Is it that time of year again already? Did I really post nothing for the whole of the last year? Yes and yes. I’ve discovered having a small child really eats into your “posting shite on the internet” time.
Yet I’m still trying to do another advent which at the best of times I struggled to get done. This year you may well see me have a breakdown.
This year, I still can’t get hold of a crappy advent that doesn’t have chocolate or bizzarely lego in it, so I’ve made up another theme. This year I’m hoping to list 25 things I hate about Christmas. I struggle to think of 25 things I know about Christmas let alone hate about it, I am an idiot.
Hate 1 – The switching on of Christmas lights
One of the things I’ve never done before but thought I should now we have a little child is go and see the switching on of the Chrsitmas lights. Ours was down to start at 7:30pm. Here is what I imagined would happen.
7:00 – Turn up and wait whilst Christmas tunes played.
7:30 – Z list celeb turns up, says how great (insert town here) is and switches on the lights.
7:31 – Everyone cheers, watches a few fireworks then goes home or to the pub.
Here’s what actually happens.
7:00 – Turn up and wait whilst the night-time local DJ from a station you’ve barely heard of plays the worst selection of Xmas tunes ever released. The ones that you don’t rememeber ever hearing as they weren’t the X Factor song or the rival “rogue” song or popular songs released around December. Some girl from a girl band that split up 7 years ago released a Christmas song 3 years ago that struggled to threaten the top 100. That sort of song.
7:15 – The DJ vaguely mumbles something about the Christmas lights around about 8 o’clock. More crap songs.
7:30 – The DJ pretends the lights were never mentioned and that everyone is here to hear his voice and then asks who wants to win tickets to some local failure from X Factor from several years ago. Four hormonally challenged, teenage, walking lard buckets scream.
7:30 to 8:00 – The DJ continues to play crap whilst teasing the four teenagers that the competition will be soon.
8:00 – Competition time. Everybody tries to ignore the horror of four overly desperate children doing stupid things for the DJ’s perverse amusement. DJ mentions Santa coming soon. Younger children start to cry as tiredness starts to beat the sweet induced sugar rush.
8:30 – Santa rocks up. We were lucky, Santa arrived on the back of a trailer made up to look like a sleigh pulled by horses with fake antlers. Your Santa may have turned up on the back of a milk float. Santa is said to be turning on the lights. This is good as I can no longer feel my legs and Master Fatuous is alternating between hyperactive running into the middle of crowds and hysterical tantrums.
8:30 to 9:00 – Santa MIA, DJ continues with the crap songs whilst chatting to a very fat man dressed as an elf. I can now feel my legs again, I preferred the numbness to the shooting pains that have replaced it. My son has managed to punch me in the mouth whilst also kicking me in the plums. I hope Santa was busy noting it down on his naughty list as he certainly wasn’t turning on any lights.
9:00 – We give up and start walking home. 20 minutes into the walk home we turn around to watch the fireworks that have finally started.