Another Christmas Note

You know the festive season is really here when you find yourself navigating round the pools of sick to get to work. The latest offering would have been helpful to any detective trying to find where the accused had walked. Repeated puddles, with necklaces of milky bile joining them together. You could be certain it was the same person as the contents of each contained the same 'signature' items of regurgitated food.

As Christmas is approaching, I decided to start finding presents and went for a jolly day out with a friend. We stopped for coffee in a ghastly, global conglomerate. There were long queues, screaming children waiting for Santa and somewhat strangely, 'Merry Costa' slogans adorning the walls.

This morning there was a disturbing article in the paper about how some white women inject illegal chemicals to become darker skinned, and how some darker skinned women use creams containing mercury (yes, mercury) and steroids to look paler. The article frequently referred to types of coffee to describe their skin tones.

The woman were so keen to achieve, I think it was 'golden cappuccino' that the threat to their long term well-being, or scarring, didn't alarm them at all.

It's all about excess isn't it? Drink until you vomit (seemingly not even considered an unusual pastime anymore) spend more than you can really afford, while being excessively obsessed about how you look.

Merry Costa indeed.

More on Christmas Confusion

It's still sunny, and now it's late November.

That's confusing.

It might explain what I heard when I went shopping this morning.

In a side street a busker was sawing through 'Summertime' which intermingled awkwardly, in certain parts of the high street, with 'Jingle Bells' played by a youth band. I resisted an urge to pop back for my recorder and join in with an early Easter rendition of 'There is a Green Hill'.

The nightmare teddies with encephalitis are back in the shopping mall, nodding with equal enthusiasm at everyone and no-one. The ghastly mall was festooned with over-sized Ali-Baba inspired baubles and ribbons. Harassed parents were trying to jam double buggies with screaming children past shop displays of 'Rockin' Santa'.

Something odd happened in all this chaos though - I found myself buying Christmas presents - which I wasn't planning to do until December started properly.

Just goes to show, the hard sell really does work, however much you think you can avoid it.