Month: December 2015

It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like…Easter

​…which means that it must be almost Christmas.  We’re only few days away from Creme Eggs being beside every till, and rows of over-packaged chocolate oeufs glaring at us menacingly from supermarket aisles.

Anyway, I’ll be surprised if anyone has the time to read this blog in the pre-Christmas rush. I’ll also probably be regretting spending valuable time writing it when I’m covered in Sellotape, garish ribbon and sparkly bows come midnight on Christmas Eve, but enough about my festive fetishes…

Eight Ways We Know it’s Almost Christmas in St Albans:
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1) The staff in Metro Bank are all wearing Santa hats. I love a Santa hat, but there’s a time and a place for everything. I know that Metro Bank is working really hard to be ‘different’, but Santa hats from 1st Dec onwards? Really? Mr Banks from Mary Poppins would turn in his grave (if snooty banker characters from films had graves, that is).
 
2) The Christmas lights are on. The Christmas lights are on! St Peter’s Street never looked so joyful. Apart from last year. And the one before. When it comes to lights, we don’t exactly push the boat out, do we? The turning on ceremony was some time back in August, I think. Basically, it was an event more about hope than delivery. Security guards at each end of the pedestrianized zone were only letting through people with pushchairs. I didn’t actually see this security cordon, but it must have been in place as there’s no other way that such a high concentration of buggies could have come to be in the same crowded, noisy, dimly lit zone. It was like a Bugaboo convention. There’s a rumour going round that next year the council are going to turn the Chrissie lights off at dusk to save money and the town centre will be illuminated solely by the glow of pub-door cigarettes.
 
3) Every third house has an estate agent’s sign up. No, there’s been no sudden upsurge in the property market; these boards are to promote local schools’ Christmas fairs. If you need your annual fix of tombola action and the chance to get your hands on a ticket ending with a 5 or a 0 then this is the time of year for you. Mind, you’ll only win something you don’t want like lavender bath salts or box of monogrammed hankies (not the correct initial, obviously), but it’s the winning that’s important. Oh, and the raising of funds for the school. Oh, and it gives estate agents the opportunity to feel like they are part of the community. Yeah, right.
 
4) You’ve received an ‘exclusive’ mailer from every other shop on the high street inviting you to an ‘exclusive’ event where the only other ‘exclusive’ people attending will be absolutely everyone else in town. You probably got this much-prized invite because of some loyalty card you signed up for seven years ago just to get an extra 10% off some vaguely significant purchase or other. The thing is, we’ve all got loyalty cards for pretty much everywhere nowadays so they are hardly reserved for the diehard faithful. There’s no loyalty any more. We’ve all got disloyalty cards for everywhere.
 
5) The most frequent person to knock at your door is not a relative, friend or neighbour, but the postman or some other delivery driver bringing you stuff you ordered online late one night after too much wine. Still, you can always donate it to next year’s tombola. I got a dreaded ‘while you were out note’ the other day from well-known (but not well-respected) delivery company. In the comments box it said ‘Package left over side gate’. Thing is, we don’t have a side gate.
 
6) You really, really know it’s Christmas when the Christmas Market is shut. Closed. Geschlossen. Finished. Have I missed something or am I not alone in thinking a festive market might actually benefit (both stall-holders and visitors) from being open around, err, Christmas and not shutting up shop on the 20th. I don’t know about you, but my propensity to drink warm, spiced wine and eat German sausage always increases the closer I actually get to Christmas.
 
7) Christmas is almost here when half of St Albans has attended ‘Carols on the Hour’ at the Cathedral. With six consecutive sell-out performances of over a thousand people, you wouldn’t blame a clergyman for thinking ‘Where are you lot the rest of the year?’ Unlike the Christmas Market, the Cathedral has wisely decided to remain open for Christmas…
We folk of St Albans clearly loved COTH (Carols on the Hour). I am a man of the COTH. Makes me think there’s a winning formula here and that St A could get a few brand extensions going:
Barrels on the Hour – all the pubs kick everyone out every sixty minutes so it’s like an enforced festive pub crawl with people continually seeking alternative hostelries.
Darryls on the Hour – every time the clock strikes the hour, some unfortunately named child of the 80’s is forced to run naked through Wilko’s with only a piece of tinsel to cover his modesty and a paper hat to adorn his mullet, whilst being squirted with limited edition Christmas-spice scented Mr Muscle by bargain-seeking shoppers.
Quarrels on the Hour – every sixty minutes local married couples are given a different topic about which to argue – from whose turn it is to put petrol in the car to whose relatives are the rudest. To provide the most conducive atmosphere for high-intensity quarrelling, this event will be hosted by a local supermarket.
Parallels on the Hour – this activity will be a synchronised slot parking event on Holywell Hill: 23 cars, 23 empty spaces and 1 minute in which to all be neatly parked up. Local traffic wardens will award points for Style and Artistic Interpretation. Each hourly winner secures a place in the Grand Final to be held in the 20-minute only waiting bay outside the main entrance of the station.
 
8) Christmas is here when people are desperately buying last-minute books, CDs and DVDs in the supermarkets. Time was when these items were your stock Christmas presents: you’d be guaranteed to get a couple of each every year. Now, with the mass-ownership of Kindles, Spotify subscriptions and Netflix the people who buy you these gifts either don’t know you very well or panicked to get you something on Christmas Eve. Owners of e-readers, music subscriptions and film-streaming services are selfish: they think nothing of cutting off the gift life-line to which distant relatives have so desperately clung for years.
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Me? I’m old-school: I’ve actually asked Santa for a book (with pages) and a CD (complete with lyrics printed on a tiny booklet); it’s my way of showing I care about my present-buying relatives…
 
Have a fabulous Christmas and see you on the other side.
 
Now, where did I put that sherry…

Winter Is Coming

I know, I know. The weather boffins say winter starts at the end of November but, here at AL3 Towers, the solstice chart says winter starts on December 21st this year so it’s still autumn for a few more days as far as we’re concerned but, thankfully, it will soon be over.
Autumn. 
The outhouse of all seasons and the sooner someone flushes it away the better.
​Make that the full flush not the eco-friendly small button one.

Does anyone really look forward to autumn?
Really? Does anyone think “Yay! Goodbye summer, ’tis the season to be gloomy”?

if the Eskimo people have dozens of words for “snow” they only need one for autumn.
Mind you, it would still have four letters and begin with ‘s’.

Autumn, 
Seriously, what does it have to offer?
You have to mess about with the clocks.
 
Ooh!  An extra hour in bed.
That’s sixty minutes that you didn’t ask to have in return for what exactly?

Well, getting up for work in the dark and coming home in the even “darker” for one thing.
But then, the “extra hour” is very much dependent on what age your offspring are as they work on kidstime. 
 
Speaking of younger members of the species, what spell gets cast that sees responsible caring parents send the little (in some cases literally) “devils” out onto the dimly streets to beg for sweets from complete strangers?
 
Yes, Halloween, one of autumn’s ugly siblings. Not satisfied with setting off a sugar fuelled frenzy that keeps my dentist’s Aston Martin on the road, it’s also deemed to be the time to boost the local farming economy by buying a ridiculous amount of that autumnal horror, the pumpkin.
 
All those good intentions of carving a masterpiece without letting the stinky flesh go to waste.
 
‘Pumpkin pie anyone?’ 
‘Mmmm, lovely. No, no it tastes nothing like soggy “any vegetable” mixed with burnt sugar at all.’

Of course, after it’s all over, there’s the carved carcass of your smelly overgrown orange tealight holder to deal with.
You leave it just outside the backdoor.You are, naturally, going to recycle it but it’s dark, wet and windy, BECAUSE IT’S AUTUMN, so you leave it until the weekend.
Then the weekend comes and the pumpkin has collapsed because that’s what they do. You lift it up carefully and it disintegrates in your hands with a ‘slop’ sound onto the patio. You then spend the next ten minutes in the dark, wet and windy conditions clearing it up. BECAUSE IT’S AUTUMN!
 
As if Halloween isn’t enough, we then foist the 5th of November on the sugar laden little people.
Having already allowed them a day of begging and glucose gluttony, it is now time for doting parents to thrust flaming sticks of chemicals in their hands and encourage them to wave them about! Yes, those very same elements your chemistry teacher made you wear goggles for are given to children.
  
Autumn.
Yes, people will say ‘look at the beautiful golds and reddish-browns of the leaves though’. But think about it, when else does the colour ‘russet’ get used?
‘Russet’ ,an autumn word,  a poetic colour for autumn that can only rhyme with……….?

That’s right. Autumn the gusset of the seasons.

Besides. Do not be fooled by the leaves.

At best they are dead foliage. Mother Nature’s blockages-in-waiting.
At worst, they are camouflage for the lazy dog owner, a slip that is yet to be discovered. 
 

Leaves here, leaves there. You sweep, you rake, you remove from the gutter but turn your back and there they are again. And while the leaves are falling to their death the grass is still growing! Taunting you because it knows it’s too wet for you to cut it  and anyway the lawn mower is right at the back of the shed because you didn’t  think you’d need it again because it’s AUTUMN and it’s when things stop growing! 
 
Autumn.
As welcome as David Cameron at a Peppa Pig party,
 
But it’s not all bad is it?
I mean look at all those Autumn plus points.
 
You can get a flu jab.
You’ll need one to feel safe sitting on that steamy windowed bus full of sneezing commuters that takes you, in the dark, to the train station to get in the damp carriage on the train that’s 30 minutes late because it was delayed by russet leaves on the track.
 
Um, oh yeah, it’s grey, wet, gloomy and windy so you’ll be comforted by the TV schedule that has “I’m Strictly an XFactor Celebrity Dancing in Downton Out of Here” to entertain you before all the good stuff comes back in the winter.
 
If autumn was a “Strictly” contender it would be Anne Widdecombe. 
‘Autumn dahhling you were a gloomy damp dreary disaster”
 
The TV adverts change for autumn.
Yes, you get the usual Xmas ones with huge tables of food and everyone having a good time, in large family groups that cover every demographic possible and make you wonder how many milkmen one house needs but you also get the autumn only “special ones”
 
They start advertising Xmas saving clubs in November? Handy.
 
The hair dye adverts with Davina Willabooby and the like start featuring feckin’ russet coloured hair!  (As an aside – do you ever wonder how they get 86% of 137 women agreeing? We’ve done the maths and there’s at least one woman who’s not all there!)
 
But pride of place goes to the central heating ad with the tag line “tired of your old bolier?”

Now hands up how many ladies out there turn round to see if their other half is smirking when that comes on?
 
Nope. Autumn is the old boiler of seasons but, thankfully,
‘Winter is coming’.

Back next week and in case our paths don’t cross until next year,

AL3 wish you all a merry, peaceful and above all healthy Christmas.