CHRISTMAS TIME IN BRITAIN : AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW ON THE THEME OF MAKING WHOOPEE!

Christmas time in Britain is oh so very traditional. We’ve always seemed to have had two kinds of people and two kinds of situations around. Firstly the very sensible, self-satisfied folk who’ve rushed around buying all their food shopping and presents for days, weeks and even hours before December 25^th and can now sit comfortably at home while the big dinner’s being prepared in the kitchen before getting down to enjoy it, meanwhile smugly watching all those others on television who didn’t have the sense to do what they’re doing. Those bright clever people who decided to do something different this year! Yes, those who thought they’d be smart-arsed and take a break from it all. Go to Spain or Miami or the Caribbean, somewhere warm for a nice sunny Christmas! And look where they wound up. Stuck in a motorway traffic jam somewhere near Gatwick or Heathrow in blinding rain or on ice… or stuck in some airport lounge with no heating because all the flights have been cancelled. Yes, there’s been another instant baggage handlers’ strike or a big pile of snow outside the window and to make it all worse there’s ten toilets for ten thousand people and eight are blocked up with no-one to fix them because the maintenance men are quietly sitting at home with their families eating roast turkey while you are stuck on a floor somewhere with your wife and kids waiting for a flight that won’t happen till sometime in Easter! Alternatively you could be in a railway station with thousands of others because you decided to travel. Spend Christmas with a relative somewhere or maybe your boyfriend and you bought him cufflinks all special and now you might not see him till the New Year!

But then you could be caught in a flood. At Christmas time it’s traditional! Appalling freezing or wet weather and FLOODING. Flooding just about everywhere but especially where you are! Christ, not again! You went out and watched the river rising, with all those guests you’d invited coming by train all that way specially. So right now you’re fucked both ways. You don’t know whether they’ll get to wherever you are and you don’t know whether you’ll be completely flooded out and won’t have any lighting let alone any power to cook.  Yes, it’s all your fault! You decided to be adventurous for a change and invite people… You decided to drive with your family to the airport and spend Christmas abroad somewhere all warm and sunny… take to the roads in blinding rain, arrive at some terminal with thousands of others waiting there all ruing the day… Yes it was you who decided to sell your house somewhere safe on a hill and go and live on a flood plain close to a river… And it was you who never thought for one moment you might be on some BBC News program with your wife up to her neck in a river holding a turkey over her head. And then it gets into your head that there are millions of people out there ALL WATCHING YOU in an airport, railway lounge, motorway traffic jam, flooded kitchen, freezing community hall, with your kids shouting and your wife looking daggers, being served a bowl of Heinz soup over Christmas Day while everyone else is sitting at home chomping on turkey, listening to the Queen and feeling all smug!

Yes, it was YOU who branded all these stay-at- homes as unadventurous traditionalists!

Christmas in Britain is that traditionally cruel frost time of the year nicely divided between kings, pages and poor men. Royalty opens windows and looks about before calling for bread, wine and pine logs. Poor men, that’s you and me, go gathering fuel to save on our energy bills and if we’ve got any time left go hunting up presents. It’s a deep, crisp and even time for most of us though, whether it’s turkeys roasting in an oven or the municipal and energy supply services shoveling up snow or coming out to do reconnecting. Those who decided to be adventurous for a change suddenly had some advertisers bubble come into their heads, had a mental collapse and picked up a phone to make reservations and give the wife a surprise. Yes and for that all they got was a bollocking! For most people though it’s all snug at home, big or small arguments and Casablanca on television or Gone With The Wind. Alternatively for the intellectuals among us it’s the BBC’s version of all the year’s news.

So we sit there all soporific and pissed, hearing about the Liberal Democrats and how they want a million more East European immigrants a year living exactly where we are; and jug-head Nigel Farage going on about Europe while his mate Godfrey Bloom calls all the girls sluts; one desperate crisis after another all over the world with rape, murder and mayhem and charities asking us to put our hands in our pockets and fish out bundles of notes most of which they’ll stick in their own for ‘expenses’; Members of Parliament going to prison for fraudulent expense claims; coked up celebrity chefs; banking executives endlessly busy organising big bonuses, cheating and fraud; and then the police! Unleashed in a demoralized society, lying and abusing people all over the place. Just about anyone with money cheating, thieving and shagging while the Coalition Government attacks the standard of living of everyone else, depriving the needy and poor, especially young people of benefits. Yes, we can sit at home and watch all the unfortunates on television, feeling genuinely self-satisfied that we did what was needed, necessary and sensible!

Well actually that’s the alternative BBC News. The one you don’t get! What you actually get are the Royals going to church, British servicemen serving overseas, the weather and a few lousy films. Oh yes, I forgot! There’s always Brian Cox! The man who knows about everything and how it all works. Quite frankly I’m shocked. So far he hasn’t been on Strictly Come Dancing, East Enders, Masterchef or some other wretched cookery program telling us how to make soup! Anything to make you feel drowsy. Speaking for myself I’d like to see him in Coronation Street, working in Nick’s Bar or having it off with Gail! Now that would really be fun! But then there was Edward Snowden’s Alternative Christmas Message on Channel Four and his earnest concern about all of us being spied on by the British and American intelligence services. As though we’re not being spied on enough with police cameras on just about every street in town centres, these people are doing it all through every piece of electronic equipment we have. Perhaps they should tell us what they’re actually doing it for?   

Christmas is a time of year when so many suffer. It’s not just those we occasionally see from our sofas. It’s also the countless numbers we don’t see. Those who haven’t got a bed or a meal for the night. Who are separated or divorced and can’t be with their kids, who spend a freezing cold night in tears under a blanket in a shop corner full of longing and sadness and years of regrets, dirty, unshaved and unloved. And then spare a thought for the lonely, those without family, those who are old, who are sick. Those who couldn’t buy this or that for children they knew or know now let alone food for themselves while celebrity chefs cook for the rich. Every year this one single time comes to be the sharp apex point of our society. For some another jest at the table and counting up loot in their heads, for others a warm satisfaction that they never booked a flight out of Gatwick, got stuck in a railway or coach station or never took to the roads let alone bought a new house on a flood plain, then yet again for others a smothered cry of despair in their heads. For some its pure fun, for others plain satisfaction, and for others again simple plain misery. For just a few it’s a matter of conscience. What’s good and what’s bad, what’s right and what’s wrong.

Yes it’s a time for the churchmen to talk. About right and wrong, good and bad. Well if you’re concerned about people that much, I mean really concerned, well go sell off all your paintings, your gold and your silver, your precious gems and your commercial property. Go sell off the loot you’ve acquired down the last two thousand years in the name of a Jew that got stuck on a cross and go out and spend it on those who are needy rather than feel a need to mess with their heads. In Spain, Italy and Mexico alone we’re talking of trillions! Yeah Mister Churchman, time to stop squawking and get down to walking and actually looking around you rather than going on from somewhere high up in a pulpit.

Time to listen up for the Pope! Time to listen up for the Queen! Time to get down to your dinner. Time to get down to the end of a miserable sandwich and stay out of the rain, cap still out on the pavement, hoping someone will notice, somewhere, with all that wind, all that rain, all that cold on the streets. That’s Christmas in Britain. People don’t care so much about others since the time that Thatcher took over. There’s far less of a communal spirit, far more of a cold hard individuality. But then if it’s true why do we all make a such a fuss about Christmas? Heaven help us if we forget what it means to be human.