The not so tree-mendous time of year

Christmas – a fleeting, wonderful, time of year.

Jam – fruity deliciousness for your toast. Neither should be spread thinly. So why does the festive season start so early now?

Black Friday may have turned out to be notable mainly for the absence of commotion in physical shopping emporiums, but it did have one worrying development that you may not have been aware of, and the Evening Mail seems to have missed – our new, young, neighbours got a Christmas tree, decorated it, and have clearly forgotten where the off switch for the lights is ever since.

At the risk of being accused, again, of getting my Scrooge flag out and waving it vigorously (and possibly a bit aggressively) from the rooftops, that’s a whole sleigh-load too early, with nigh-on a month to go until the jolly chap in red is due to show up with presents (and I don’t mean the postie with your Amazon delivery), and Grandma gets a bit squiffy on the cooking sherry.

Unless you happen to be a shop (in which case your staff are already plotting Jona Lewie’s imminent demise after hearing “Stop The Cavalry” for the 400th time) there really isn’t an excuse to be decking the halls quite this early. Not that I’m forgiving the shops, either – some of them started in September. You’ll just have to imagine me tutting and rolling my eyes at this point.

To make sure I hadn’t messed my facts up, I did nearly two minutes of research on the internet, which revealed very little of use, and that the general consensus amongst reasonably-minded people is do whatever you want when it comes to getting all festive.

When I come to power (which is inevitable, really, as I’m obviously a well-balanced individual with the best interests of the inhabitants of this country at heart) I intend to introduce a law stating that anything tinsel-related, bauble-ish, tree-like, or featuring strings of lights (Fairy or otherwise) is strictly prohibited until 12 days before Christmas.

Disobeying this law will result in offenders being forced to live on Brussels Sprouts for the duration of the season, whilst listening to “Agadoo” by Black Lace on loop. And no Doctor Who Christmas Special or After Eights, either.

Using the “It’s for the kids!” excuse won’t cut it either. It might be a special time for them, but spreading it out so that more than 10% of the year is Christmas-themed isn’t making the fun last longer – it mostly winds up being like all the other months, but more glittery.

And just because they want it, doesn’t mean they should automatically get it, does it? Not after that incident with the Hamster, Plasticine and a hair dryer, anyway.

The anticipation, the rush of excitement... there’s something great about it only being brief. You wouldn’t take a great 3 minute pop song and stretch it out to 25, would you?

Wait... I think I just slagged off Prog Rock. Oops.

Is that a humbug? Lovely.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 4th of December 2015. I can prove it too, because it's on their website here, although they renamed it as the less pun-tastic "Too early for seasonal cheer".

Of course, posting it now just makes me look like a miserable old sod, which is fair enough, because it's true. Having said that, I had a rare, genuinely enjoyable, day in the office yesterday - Christmas lunch, sat with my favourite colleagues, and laughed like a drain during the day at the stupendous Sewell Sampler. Hard to explain, but go and have a look. You won't regret it. Maybe I'm not Scrooge reincarnated after all? Don't answer that.

(CD A-Z at D - Def Leppard's covers album "Yeah"! The Leps do ELO? Count me in.)

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

Suffering from natural obsolescence

You know you’re getting old when it dawns on you that you’re outliving technological breakthroughs. You know the sort of thing – something revolutionary, that heralds a seismic shift it the way the modern world operates. Clever, time-saving, breathtaking and life-changing (and featuring a circuit board). It’s the future, baby! Until it isn’t any more. I got to pondering this when we laughed heartily in the office about someone asking if our camcorder used “tape”. Tape? Get with the times, Daddy-o! If it ain’t digital then for-get-it! I then attempted to explain to an impossibly young colleague that video tape in a camcorder was indeed once a “thing”, requiring the carrying of something the size of a briefcase around on your shoulder, containing batteries normally reserved for a bus, and a start-up time from pressing ‘Record’ so lengthy, couples were already getting divorced by the time it was ready to record them saying “I do”. After explaining what tape was, I realised I’d ...

Shouting in the social media mirror

It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog