Category: Winter

St Albans’ First Non-European-Style Christmas Market

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?”

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.
​
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…