“So, why is Christmas rattling around on the periphery of my
thoughts on a hot morning in August?” I hear myself and nobody else at all
wondering. Well, why would you? By the time I get around to actually sharing this thought, August is almost certainly likely to already be fading into memory and we’re just as likely to all be hurtling towards Chrimbletide anyway. Still, it’s always good to “plan ahead” and September is looming large (and may very well have already spluttered into life) which is traditionally when I like to give a thought or two to what is going to
be bought for whom, and how far in advance I might have to order it to avoid the
Christmas parcel rush, but I don’t think that what’s causing this, to be honest with you, even though the
supermarkets will be sweeping away their Union Flag and Olympic themes and
their “seasonal” barbecue ranges, almost as soon as the last of those athletes
has caught the last plane home and no doubt be displaying their advent
calendars and special chocolates before the first chill of Autumn has swept in.
But I really don’t think that’s it, really…
For the last two Chrimbletides, I have, against my better
judgement and to almost universal ambivalence, decided to run a kind of “advent
calendar” theme through the 25 days in the run up to that allegedly “big” day
which usually ends up being fairly small in my own little life.
That shouldn’t be taken as a benchmark, by the way, because
a lot of other people seem to enjoy it.
Anyway, year one involved a bizarre Christmas tale unfolding
through song and poetry and narrative which actually seemed to make some kind
of sense at the time, and year two found me ferreting about through my hoard of
old Christmas TV guides to find tales of our collective seasonal televisual
past here in the good old U of K. There’s enough copies left in those boxes to do that again
of course, but I seem to recall a mammoth and hugely complicated task of
scanning, cataloguing and word-wrangling which unexpectedly unfolded from a
simple idea and which left me quite exhausted for a while.
So the problem remains… What to do this year…?
I mulled things over, turned over a few ideas, but the
cupboard remains bare, apart from that tiny bit of the end of a strand of tinsel
attached to the corner with a little bit of sellotape which has somehow managed
to remain there, twinkling in the daylight, for the entire year since the rest
of it was hauled down at the beginning of January.
I could, for example, go through some old photographs and
tell you tales of Christmases past, but there are very few of those actually,
and not many of them trigger memories that ought to be shared. I might have tried
writing some fake letters to Santa which might have been amusing, but I’ve not
got Christmas deeply ingrained enough into my psyche to do it well enough. I
considered explaining some of my past presents only to find out that, like many
things, the memories of where, when and who get a bit hazy once the wrapping
paper has been torn off.
I toyed for a while with playing to my strengths and writing
about those TV “Christmas Specials” which have plagued us across the years, but
there are better places to go to read about such things and I couldn’t really think of enough of them to go around.
For a moment, I considered that the easiest option would be
to write 25 seasonal limericks but they’re not as easy as they seem, and somehow
don’t manage to look that impressive on the page, even if I could dig out
suitable illustrations to make them appear as if slightly more thought has been
put into them than there really would have been.
I even mulled over just talking about the various
decorations that emerge from the box each year and how I came by them but, ah
you know… Like other people’s holiday photos they’re never as interesting to
anyone else as they are to you, and I’m really going to struggle to come up with
much in the way of entertaining thoughts to accompany any of them.
“Oh, here’s some tinsel we bought in Woolworths… Funny
story, but…”
Nah!
The boxes of old TV Guides are still lurking there, calling
out to me to return them to the light, of course, but the long, hard slog of
just working out which ones it was that I’ve already trawled through for your
delectation and delight doesn’t really appeal and, do you know what, I’m not sure I’ve got the energy
and I’ve got a slight sense of “been there, done that…” going on with them,
too, even though I did find some more when I was hunting down other things on
other days.
So the problem remains and I wait for inspiration to strike.
Perhaps a paragraph a day of something resembling a ghost story might be nice,
but I think that it’s beyond my imagination, or a diary of my own run up to the
day itself might be a good idea, if my own experiences of that time of year weren’t
so utterly uneventful in comparison to most people, it would appear.
Perhaps the simplest option would be to take another “month
off” at that time of year. After all, people have busy lives and many
distractions and it would be easy to just drift away unnoticed and recharge the
batteries (not included) for a few weeks
whilst all of the focus and attention is otherwhere, but, ah, you know…
There’s my old nemesis “compulsion” again drawing me back
into the fray…
I get troubled by a lack of inspiration, of course I do, and
I do fret about finding the time to actually do the things which I choose to
do, but sometimes the worst of it is that I feel like I’m letting myself down
in some way because I ought to be able to think of something to add to the billions
of words that have been written about such things as Santa and reindeer and Chrimbletide cheeriness…
Shouldn’t I…?
Well, you are a victim to own tabard - you have too much to chose from. Odd, with the first few days of September I too find myself thinking about that very much awaited only to be disappointed time of year. There is autumn in the air. I like the ghost story idea - I might even St Nick it.
ReplyDeleteWell I always enjoy the darker side to your humour, so what about a satirical look at the festive traditions, perhaps starting with the horrors of the office party? Just a thought. :-)
ReplyDeleteYou never know... ;-)
ReplyDeleteGosh! You went to an office party? Oh yes, I was there too. How tiresome and banal. What we needed was a Mr Fezziwig!
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