WHISPERING SMITH: Christmas, turkeys and automatons

The jolly seasonal songs in the stores, the cards I buy but never send, my kids on my back because I don’t want to splash out on an expensive Christmas tree exactly the same as I didn’t want to last year but caved in and wasted twenty quid on a tree the needles of which can still be found wedged into the carpet if you look hard enough.

The dreary television – I don’t think I can take The Great Escape again. The revellers who have over-imbibed and wake me up as they roll home at three in the morning. The pile of unopened charity letters building up beneath my letterbox.

The planning of New Year’s Eve even before Christmas Day has passed on by and all of those dead turkeys.

People become automatons, all following the same routines, spending money on presents no one really wants and I have nowhere to hide now that it is too cold for the allotment shed!

It’s not a Scrooge thing, though, I think the Christmas spirit should be apparent every day of the year, just as it should always be summer with a brief autumn and spring and we dump winter in altogether.

Wait a minute though… isn’t this the only time of the year I meet old friends? The few days when the kids are home and appearing to enjoy my company and isn’t the Christmas tree row a family tradition and they know I will always buy one come Christmas Eve?

And don’t I get to see A Wonderful Life at the East Beach Café once again? And isn’t the aroma of burning logs on an open fire worth the effort of cleaning the grate in the morning, rather in the way that washing up the dirty dinner dishes doesn’t really spoil the great meal that spawned them?

I guess I will enjoy it as usual and raise a glass of my own to dear, absent friends. And we never have turkey anyway!