We were asked for a review of 2018. Now we’re the type of people who prefer to look forward but… We must deliver the will of the people.
NB – We are no slaves to time or truth so the content may not be chronologically or factually correct.
January – Dry. Kind of. More damp really, leaning towards wet. Save St Albans Pubs!
Trains – Bad. Ticket prices up. Although cancellations and delays were up too so there’s a kind of symmetry and order at play here.
Let the train take the strain.
Buses – Bad. Why aren’t they electric? Why aren’t they warm? You wait ages for one and then…
Sinkholes – Bad. You wait decades for one then…
Potholes – Bad. Efforts to rectify are on a par with bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon.
New Mayor – Great. Cllr Rosemary Farmer. We say “great” but only because we feel a Mayor called Rose Farmer may do something pretty with the park flower beds. Plus, we can only assume that the Royal National Rose Society based at the Gardens of the Rose is her family business. Which is nice.
Police – Great. New Chief Inspector vowed to tackle the wave of burglaries. Chief Inspector replaced (repeat as necessary) We think we’re still on the 3rd one? It may well be Inspector Gadget by now for all we know. Tip – Never “vow” anything. It only leads to woe. Ask Theresa.
Tree Felling – Bad. They chopped down the tree at the Clock Tower. The tree had to come down for “safety reasons” not because it interfered with any planned projections of a Christmassy nature on the tower.
Christmas lights turn on – Enlightening. But if it gets any earlier then it’ll start to compete with Bonfire Night.
Christmas Fair – Fair. But somebody didn’t want it anywhere near where they live.
Housing – Fair. Plans for 15,000 in the district but nobody wants them anywhere near where they live.
Museum – Good (ish). But £7.75m? (could have built some houses). Does anyone else start singing “1-2-3 1-2-3 drink!” when they see the chandeliers in the Georgian Assembly Room?
We’re gonna swing from this chandelier, this chandelier.
UK’s Strongest Man – Good. But where, exactly, was the leader of the DUP? (Yes, we know).
St Albans Boy – V Bad. Fell “up to his nose” in Verulamium Lake. We never found out if this was head or feet first? One of which wouldn’t be quite so dramatic. We also wonder if, like Dr Foster, he never went there again?
Don’t drink the water!
Verulamium Lake – Bad. Still dirty. Ask the St Albans boy.
Heatwave – Good. Remember moaning how hot it was? Well, say “Hello” to burst pipes and slushy pavements people!
Back soon Folks! (After we’ve saved another St Albans pub!)
August 2018’s inaugural Meraki Christmas Festival was a huge success, selling over 4,000 glasses of mulled wine, 8,000 jars of locally produced cranberry sauce and 1,400 half-dozen packets of Redbournbury Mill‘s mince pies.
To avoid the confined space of the walled, sheltered, easy-to-reach, right-in-the-town-centre Vintry Gardens, and the inconvenience associated with the cold winter weather, St Albans District Council made the inspired decision to not only move the location of this year’s Christmas Market but to also hold the festive fair at a more user-friendly time of year during the summer holidays.
Ivor P Folio, council member for festive markets, said: “I’m going to see my brother, Keith, in Florida in December so I thought I’d get the whole inconvenient Christmas Market thing out of the way nice and early in August this year. You know how tricky it is when you’re trying to pack flowery holiday shirts and fritter away council tax-payers’ money all at the same time.”
Ivor P Folio
A wide range of stall-holders deemed the Merry-AKI (Albans’ Kristmas In-summer) festival a resounding winner:
Indoor comfy footwear retailers ‘All Saints’n’Slippers’ said: “Christmas is our busiest period so it’s great to get this event out of the way early. To be honest, we didn’t actually sell that many pairs, but we think shoppers were impressed with our quality as people near us could be heard commenting ‘Ooh, they’ve worn well, haven’t they’, which was nice.”
Never Ever (leave the label on)
From her gazebo selling pirate eye-wear, stall-holder Gabrielle thought she could make a good profit at the festival if it ran for longer: ‘Give me just a little more time’, she could be heard murmuring to herself.
Sales were patchy for some stall holders
The motorcycle spare-parts tent seemed a little out of place, but from beneath a Christmassy banner offering ‘10CC’s Dreadlock Festival Holiday Deals’, sales assistants were very happy to attend. “We’ve somewhat mixed views on summer sports so to be here instead is light relief; we don’t like cricket, oh no.”
The travel advisor selling sunset tours to a secret location (near a tree by a river, there’s a hole in the ground, apparently) was a fan of the switch to summer and the longer evenings. “I won’t let the sun go down on me,” claimed Mr Kershaw, at the same time denying that he was about to start selling NASA memorabilia at his permanent Christopher Place shop, SpaceNK.
Wouldn’t it be good?
Electrical retailers Dave More and Suzie Cheeba thought the summer event would get better and better every year, stating: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” To labour the point, they added that this year’s event was ‘Way beyond’ their expectations and that its evolution was ‘Part of the process’ and that everyone should ‘Enjoy the ride’ and that those who were quick to complain were too ‘Trigger hippie’. They would have commented further but a customer called Mr Wikipedia interrupted.
A special Christmas auction was a huge success at the Merry-AKI. Although the most anticipated lot, a real-life Elf On The Shelf, was unavailable at short notice, the organisers sourced a last-minute replacement and there was furious bidding amongst men in their 40s for the right to have Pixie Lott 3A in their homes for 24 hours. Dad of six (or seven, he wasn’t sure), Brandon from Fleetville said: “I’ve had eight pints of Farr Brew and the missus is asleep in the circus tent, so I’ve re-mortgaged the house to bid for Lott 3A.”
Lott 3A: a Pixie
The successful Merry-AKI Christmas event ran over three days. Unfortunately, it only being mid-August and his red outfit still at the cleaners, Santa couldn’t attend. However, he did send his stunt-double, Noah. Fittingly, Noah arrived in a downpour of biblical proportions. We were informed that Noah was Santa’s stand-in, but we are now wondering if they are one and the same person. After all, you never actually see Santa and Noah in the same room, so I guess it’s plausible…
We sought clarification from Merry-AKI organisers about Noah’s lookalike status but a spokesman, Moses, refuted our hypothesis, claiming we’d got confused with the Council’s other summer outdoor event, ‘Larks in the Ark.’
fun in the sun
For many, the festive highlight was the Silent-Night disco where Christmas revellers could shake their jingle bells, getting them to ding-dong merrily on high whilst wearing warming ear-muffs.
It’s so quiet, shh shh.
AL3 thought it was a stroke of sheer genius to hold a giant game of ‘Ghost Bus’, where festival-goers had to search for hours for a mysterious pre-paid bus to transport them to or from the seasonal extravaganza. The Polar (National) Express was a resounding success as a way of keeping little ones entertained although, at £8 per ticket (excluding bus ride), it was a tad expensive.
You wait for ages then…
Packed with tinsel, roasted chestnuts and festive good cheer, Merry-AKI was lots of fun. AL3 is looking forward to the outdoor summer event that the same organisers are holding at Westminster Lodge this December. We’re camping for the full 23 days and will be packing swimming trunks for the giant water-slide and looking forward to picnics in the sunshine and relaxing outdoor massages.
========================================================================= Christmas is all about traditions and here at AL3 WTF we, like families across St Albans, like nothing more than repeating exactly the same festive habits year-in, year-out. In fact, so much so that it is customary for us to re-issue the same blog every single year. We’ve been doing this each December since our formation so that, err, actually means this is only the second time. We’re ahead of the curve, to be honest. TV is all about repeats at this time of year and we’re blazing a trail for blogs to replicate that successful formula… Here are eight ways to tell it’s almost Christmas in St Albans. Apart from no. 2 (+ 10 pts credit to the Council, the light turning on ceremony this year was actually pretty good; bigger, better and more spread out) they all hold true. Actually, no.6 is even more true this year: we thought it really odd that the Christmas Market finished on the 20th last and this year it shut on the 18th (deduct 15pts from the Council – tut, tut, tut – must try harder) ===========================================================
It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like…Easter
…which means that it must be almost Christmas. We’re only few days away from Cream Eggs being beside every till, and rows of over-packaged chocolate oefs 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:
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. Darrlys 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: 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. Me? I’m old-school: I’ve actually asked Santa for 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.
Following three years of somewhat mixed success, coupled with the Brexit vote, St Albans District Council has renamed the European Christmas Market. Henceforth, the seasonal pine-chalet convention will be known as the Non-Aligned Snorbens Town Yuletide Xenophobia Main Anne Street Market, or NASTY XMAS Market, for short.
This year, the NASTY XMAS Market will sell only British goods; the alpine chalets have all been returned to B&Q, the left-over gluhwein from 2015 has been poured into Verulamium Lake to help disperse the algae, and the German sausage stall has been sold on eBay to a sour kraut. The traders will now peddle their wares from traditional pale grey British Portakabins. Each Portakabin will be adorned with a trademark festive yellow drainpipe and seasonal graffiti greetings such as “Nigel woz ere” and “sh*t market” will be sprayed on each unit courtesy of local tag-wearing young offenders working under a council-funded community expression scheme called OIKS – Offering Insolent Kids Spray-cans.
Free from the prohibitive EU red-tape that restricts and spoils Christmas markets Europe-wide, the NASTY XMAS Market is now entitled to draw up its own laws and regulations so expect: fire-eating classes for the under 5s; a bye-law that ensures alcohol is only consumed by people who are armed with a freshly sharpened sword, and the wearing of highly flammable Noddy Holder masks will be compulsory for everyone entering the Vintry Gardens. Also be aware that every single food item sold at the market will have a silver sixpence hidden inside it.
The NASTY XMAS Market will sell only: – Fish & chips – Warm beer – Flat caps – Subscriptions to the Daily Mail – Thameslink branded memorabilia (n.b. due to a shortage of staff, these items may appear smaller than promised, arrive later than timetabled, and will cost much more than they are worth) – NASTY XMAS Market merchandise such as “My parents went to the NASTY XMAS Market and all they bought me was this t-shirt with a sh*t slogan on it” and mugs proclaiming “NASTY XMAS Market – the only place you can get sleighed and Slade and slayed”
To ensure mass appeal, successful high street retailers will also be hosting pop-up outlets at the seasonal vintry-fest. After a fierce bidding war for the prime spots, prominent Portakabins will be mis-managed by: Bhs Ratners Woolworths HMV MFI Kwiksave
Interestingly, on the official website for the market, the FAQs section contains a full and thorough list of no less than two (for those of you reading in black and white that’s ‘2’) key questions telling you absolutely everything you could possibly need to know about the 2016 market and planning your visit.
Q1: Can I take my dog? (A; yes, but please don’t is the advice) and Q2: Are the same stalls there throughout the 24 days (A: No, there will be “different stalls every time you visit” – this is assuming, we imagine, that you don’t visit the market twice in the same day. Plus, the market is actually open for 25 days, but here at AL3 WTF, we’re not ones to split hairs…)
More to the point, are these the only two questions in the minds of any potential visitor to our City’s outdoor festive offering? We can think of a few more obvious ones.
– Why does the market finish a whole week before Christmas? – Will there actually be any signs or advertising this year? – Is it true that Donald Trump will be Father Christmas in the market’s grotto?
Council Portfolio Holder for Festive Markets, Ivor Bigsack, said: “We want to make this the biggest and best Christmas market in Britain. To maximise the festive feel and spread the Christmas love as widely as possible, the 2017 EVEN NASTIER XMAS Market – Every Vendor Earns Nowt Non-Aligned Snorbens Town Isn’t Even Ready Xenophobia Main Anne Street Market – will open for business on 2nd Jan 2017, giving our town the year-round non-festive feel that it so richly doesn’t deserve.
”Roy Wood and Wizzard wished it could be Christmas every day, and with our new January though to December seasonal market strategy, in St Albans it can be. Of course, in 2016 the market itself finishes on 18th December, giving plenty of time for local people to do their traditional last-minute shopping on-line. I mean, here at the Council we’re not daft are we? We’re not going to go and do something really stupid like have the Christmas Market actually open near to Christmas; that would be absolutely plain sensible and way beyond our remit.”
Annie Brewster, Council Portfolio Holder for Tinsel and Glitter, did not say: “If I dress up as a fairy and sit on top of the tree do you promise not to take my picture and not to syndicate to every publication in Hertfordshire?”
…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:
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. 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.
