Monthly Archives: December 2012

Holidays are coming

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Caution is advised when sharing ones enthusiasm for Christmas with others. A time of year that traditionally brings love, happiness and belonging to many can bring the polar opposites from the emotional spectrum to those who have experienced misery. Having been on the receiving end of the shittest Christmas in living memory last year, I know too well that it can be hideous.

My dad never enjoyed Christmas when I was a child. In fact, he used to go out of his way to make sure that we didn’t enjoy it either, often spending the entire period in bed. We just shrugged it off and made the most of the best bits anyway, but it was never nice seeing my mum’s efforts to pacify him cause such a strain on her. She’d have been advised to hit the sherry and forget about him by many, but she carried on with her matriarchal duties to ensure that the festive period was enjoyable for everyone.

Now I’m older I can sympathise with Dad somewhat: he was away from his family in Italy and communication via telephone wasn’t even a possibility in the days when there was a waiting list for a telephone line. On the other hand, he was also a miserable, moody sort and he just used any excuse to retreat to his blackness.

Despite those Christmases that were “sub-optimal” because of my dad’s moods, I always think fondly of the time, remembering back to the excitement shared with my sister as we counted down from the first of December, or maybe even November. We shared a bedroom and we’d try to stay awake on Christmas Eve in the hope of hearing sleigh bells. But anyway, we’ve both had our own homes for the past few years so that all stopped in about 2000. ;o)

With my niece growing into a child that I love to spend time with, I fully intend to make the absolute most of the Christmas period for as many years as the magic remains for her. Saying that though, and having been in the “this is the most terrible, awful time of the year” situation last year, I am conscious that the joy can’t be forced on people.

On the other hand, some people are just fucking miserable for the sake of it, probably because they read the Guardian and listen to too much Radio 4 and they deliberately let all the joy be leached from their lives. They can go fuck themselves with what ever non-religious, non-festive, eco-friendly miserable box set of “teach yourself how to knit yourself content: a self-help guide because nobody wants to help you” DVDs and stay out of my way.

Happy Holidays.

In the midnight hour

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It’s midnight on Saturday and I’m in bed drinking coffee. Madness, I know, but sometimes I let the crazy take over.

Today was a bit of a waste, having spent most of it nursing grogginess and a headache that resulted from enjoying 730ml of strong red Italian wine last night. As I left a small amount undrunk in the glass last night, I was proud at the restraint I’d shown in not going for the whole 750ml. At 9am today, I cursed that my restraint hadn’t kicked in further up the bottle.

It’s always been like this, the first two glasses of wine are lovely and warming, cuddling me with their giddiness and I always know that this is when it’s time to stop and recork the bottle. The flavour changes with the third glass and the enjoyment of the drink itself evaporates, but by this stage, I lose all sense of sense and drink for the sake of finishing the bottle.

Utterly stupid.

So it’s a proven fact that alcohol and me don’t mix and that’s why I stopped drinking so many years ago.

End of story.

Interview
I had a job interview yesterday. It’s odd when people ask “how did it go?” because I can never tell, apart from there are always OK bits, not bad bits, and bits that left me wanting to punch myself in the head in front of the panel.

To say that I don’t care whether I get the job would be untrue. If I get it, it will put me on the next rung of the ladder and I’d find myself in a job with more responsibility, possibly less mither and the opportunity to offer a different level of support in the field in which I’ve found myself. Plus with final salary pensions in mind, it’s good to move up. Saying all this though, I have the advantage of being in a good job that I’m finally enjoying; I work with some fantastic people and I’m never short of things to do.

At this stage, I’d be kidding myself to think I’ve been successful in my current quest to move on, but it’s always good to put yourself through these ordeals on occasions to help figure out how to achieve that next step.

Chicken
I’m quite nostalgic, always referring back to my childhood. This is because I never wanted to grow up. Being an adult is basically shit. There’s a magic about being a kid and with each passing day, the fairy dust just turns to dust and one day, when you’re a grown up, all there is is dusting. Philip Pullman clearly realised all this when he penned “His dark materials”, the metaphor for children losing their innocence being the point at which they can see dust.

When I was young, my parents would drag me around places either on foot or by public transport. I disliked this during the winter months because they’d always find somebody to stop and talk to on the mile walk home from Swinton and, being short and close to the frozen ground, I’d have to stand there in silence getting colder and colder as they talked grown up stuff with other grown ups.

We’d go to the local market some days and Mum would buy a rotisserie chicken to make a curry from. These things were divine with proper crispy skin and a full flavour that oozed out of the shopping bag all the way home.

All the supermarkets do rotisserie this or that these days, but none produce anything like those we had when I was a kid. Yet still I buy them in the hope that they might one day find the secret recipe that the stall on Pendlebury market used all those years ago.

December shall be magic again
So, it’s finally December and I’ve not even bought my sprouts for Christmas dinner yet. There’ll be riots in Stoneclough if I get them wrong, so I’d better get a move on and get them boiling by next weekend at the latest.

I recalled last Christmas to somebody when I was drunk, maybe more than one person, maybe on more than one occasion. Anyway, last Christmas was the most hideous time I’ve ever had during my hideous life: I’d had my heart ripped out; I’d started medication for depression that stopped me sleeping and made me feel like I was being chased by a pack of wolves; I spent most days exhausted, starving and hungover. I went to my parents’ for Christmas dinner, my entire being suffering from tremors and thoughts of murder, desperate to be anywhere else, but needing to be near my family. As I pushed what remained of a sprout around my dinner plate, and just as I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my dad exclaimed “we’ve forgotten the parsnips!”.

So this year, dear family, there will be parsnips aplenty, roast potatoes without rival and enough sprouts to fuel a small town for a month. There will also be stabbings if my brother insists on watching anything on TV other than the festive offerings on the main channels. I refuse to spend another Christmas Day being subjected to the Discovery Channel.