Where has the time gone? It’s mid-way through December already. Mind you, the festivities have been on-going at Chez Hayward for a couple of weeks, much to the disgust of certain friends. I innocently posted on a social networking site that our Christmas tree was up and I was bombarded with strongly worded and distinctly unseasonal comments about my inherent lack of class. What can I say, I’m a working class boy and if my tree goes up on 30th November then so be it.
Christmas after all is about the build-up so why not start a little early? If you’re lucky you get about 60, 70, or even 80 Christmasses in your lifetime so suck them up and enjoy them is what I say as it’ll soon be over and before you know it you’ll be hoovering around the feet of the last remaining relative late on Christmas Day in the hope they’ll take the hint and bugger off.
Not that I’ve ever done that of course. It’s just what I’ve heard people do.
Let’s be honest, Christmas ends on Christmas Day. Boxing Day is just a hangover, a Christmas Day-lite. Anyone who tries to re-live the spirit of the big day on the 26th December is just kidding themselves. Just choke down that cold turkey and move on.
Talking of Turkeys, I have already consumed my first two Turkey dinners of the festive campaign. The first was at The Haycock over at Wansford and was the final farewell meal with our good friends who are leaving these fair shores in the next couple of weeks to set up a new life in Australia. Or at least that’s what they’re telling us. It could of course be an elaborate ploy to rid themselves of the more boorish hangers on like myself. In which case I can’t say I blame them.
The meal itself was good. An 8 out of 10. It lost points for the economy of veg but everyone’s a critic. I blame Come Dine with Me and its loathsome procession of self-professed “I’m crazy, me” characters. Seriously though, if a dinner guest of mine started poking around my underwear drawer then a) good luck to them, but, b) they’ll be asked to leave.
A good night was had by all and I’m sworn to secrecy as to who, when asked what the worst thing they’d ever drunk, said their own cold sick. There’s nothing like shameless honesty.
The second turkey dinner of the season was in the staff canteen at work (bonus points for value for money) but I still have 3 more turkey dinners to come, the final one being the biggest and the best courtesy of the present Mrs Hayward. Before that I have one in a pub in the New Forest on Sunday and the work’s Christmas party at Orton Hall on Thursday, but to be fair the latter one will pass by in a bit of an inebriated blur if previous parties are anything to go by.
So Christmas is well under way. I’ve done my Santa duty at the kids Christmas party already – yet again they didn’t see through my disguise and if they did they kept it to themselves. Probably for the best, Santa doesn’t give presents out to naughty boys and girls who blow his cover. Mind you, this was the first year I disguised Santa’s incongruous strawberry blonde eyebrows with the application of a bit of white make-up.
I believe I said to a friend that I’d go out in Bourne dressed as Santa on Christmas Eve but in retrospect I don’t think I’d welcome the unnecessary attention this may cause. They’re simple folk in Bourne and I don’t want them to get a little spooked by my appearance as the worst case scenario is that I find myself spending the small hours of Christmas morning tied to a stake outside the Corn Exchange while the townsfolk converge to light the surrounding bonfire with a view to sacrificing Santa to the winter sprites. That’s bound to have happened before.
So, burning at the stake aside, I also don’t want to get remnants of my fake beard drifting around in my festive winter ale like flotsam.
So, Christmas is in full swing and I embrace it. Now I must get round to writing those cards, they just won’t write themselves.
