Christmas

The column in the paper last week was about Christmas, but it was PG, and I’ve been neglecting this blog lately…so let’s put another round in the chamber…

As usual it’s going to be sporadic – thoughts vomited on the page as I see fit.

Most men cannot remember the first time they masturbated – and before I go on, yes I am aware that my mother reads this blog…but she’s my mother, you think she didn’t pick up a crusty sock off the floor when I was 12 and not know why it wasn’t Lenor fresh?

Anyway, I’ve got a good idea of when I did.  All men, and women, will know that a good shuffle of the wrist is the equivalent of of about 6 night nurses.  And obviously this Christmas Eve I was so excited about Santa Claus coming arriving that I had to take matters into my own hands.  So there you are, I was at the Santa believing age.  Too much information?  You do know whose blog you’re reading don’t ya?

The first think I’d do when I woke up was look out the window and over to the Lanigan’s house…to see if any of them were up.  That was usually a good barometer of whether or not it was safe for me to get out of bed.  Did everyone look around their estate on Christmas morning to see what lights were on?  “Jesus christ the Wallaces were up at 5am!”  Well the fucking decorations were up in October so it makes sense…

Creep down the stairs and slowly open the door to the sitting room…

Some people leave presents in the bedroom.  For me that takes the fun out of the journey down the stairs…it’s all about the build up… (like the sock I was talking about earlier)…

…slowly open the door and even in the darkness you can make out shapes and see the glistening of presents…

One year my mother announced that she was, and I quote “not wrapping those fucking christmas presents anymore”.  I wasn’t having any of it.  Once I reminded her that they didn’t have to be wrapped in a bacardi mist on Christmas Eve she seemed okay to carry on the tradition.

I remember a lot of really brilliant presents.  And, as I try and think back now…i can only recall one below par gift that my mother got me.  Along with a Manchester United Jersey and Jacket (which were fine)…a book about Phil Babb and Jason McAteer – two fucking Liverpool players.  “But they play for Ireland too!” she cried in vein.  Strange mother, very strange.  What kind of Saturday afternoon rush were you in for that book to fall into your grasp.

The Commodore 64 and the SNES were two winners…There really is nothing like spending Christmas Day playing Donkey Kong Country, the greatest platform game ever made.  As far as the commodore 64 goes…once we got a game to load, in this case “Daley Thompson’s Decathlon” we had to make full use of the suction cups at the base of the joystick and stick it to a piece of wood as we jiggled the stick to make the little black man run 1500 metres.

 

Annuals were another fantastic gift.  I was a fan of “The Big Comic Fortnightly” which most people have never heard of.  But they were indeed great stocking fillers.  I can also remember getting the double cassette of Queen Live at Wembley 1986.  Very proud of myself for asking Santa for that one.

When you’re a young kid with an allowance of £5 per week, you tend to buy crap presents for others.  Shit like this:

 

 

Cheap bath crap that would probably give you leprosy if you used it.  And we didn’t even have a fucking bath.  Every house has one of these things stuck in a press somewhere.  Some people are tempted to re-gift it but stop themselves at the last minute because they know that their back would be cut right off them if they did.  No, these things are reserved for kids to buy for their mums, or Gran Aunties to buy for everyone.

No word of a lie, I was once given one of these as a christmas present by a grand aunty:

 

I didn’t even have a walkman.

Other crap presents that nobody wants to receive include certain types of clothing.  If you’re a kid, you don’t want to receive clothes anyway, except if it’s a soccer jersey or something related to football…except for cheap Pennys tops.  People, don’t ever be tempted to buy this shit for someone in your life.  You know the clothes I’m talking about…instead of saying Manchester United, it will say “Manchester!”  or “Striker!”  or some generic crap like that with a picture of some roy of the rovers looking idiot.  Horrific.

Every year I would ask my father what he wanted me to get him, and every year the answer was the same.  So that’s what he would get.  Every year:

 

Damn those fuckers from Gilette for releasing The Mach 3.  The budget for shaving paraphernalia suddenly went from 2 quid to about 30 fucking quid.  Are razors mined from the grounds of some tiny village in Ghana where 200 lives are lost a year in the quest for the “best a man can get?” – Why are they so fucking expensive?!!

Thankfully for me he uses them til the blade is withered away to nothing and the “aloe strip” is nothing but a fanciful reminder of Christmas Day.

Funny thing about Christmas is that you are, usually, always delighted with the presents you got and you’d hate to be someone else with whatever crap they’re after getting.  You don’t understand that what they’re getting is what they actually wanted.  All you can see, like me one year looking at my sister’s new wardrobe, is why the fuck they’d want that instead of a shiny new Stereo.  People that are not me are just plain odd.

So…Christmas morning…into St. Johns for a bit of Mass.  The last advent Candle lit – happy fucking days.  There’s kids all around us playing with transformers and shit.  One year I saw a kid cycling a BMX at the back of the church.

So, the holiest day of the year the worst part of it is having to sit through 40 minutes of the most boring shite you ever had to endure.  It really is beyond me how people put up with this every week.  The same stupid gospel..the same boring readings…the same meaningless sermon that 99% of the people don’t listen to cause they’re sleeping with they’re eyes open.   The only highlight for me was when the priest said “Let us pray” and nobody had a clue whether to stand up or kneel down, so some did one and others did the other.  The stubborn would stick with their choice whether they were right or wrong.  Either way, the highlight of the whole thing was the words “The Mass has ended, you may go in peace”.  I know the words to follow are “Thanks be to God”, but on more than once occasion I heard it as “Thanks be ta Christ” as the rush for the doors would commence…there’s a turkey at home in the Oven…There’s drink to be drank… THERE’S A SUPER NINTENDO TO BE PLAYED WITH!!!

Every Irish family is probably the same, tradition dictates the structure of the day – 7

7am (or before) – Get up to presents.  Yes Boy.  I’d then run across the road to my cousins to exchange more presents.  This was a tradition that they got bored with a lot sooner than me.  I was still running my ass over there at 18 years of age in search of Choc Mallows…”

9am – Breakfast – A Fry up.  Although I’m more of a selection box man myself.

11/12 – Mass.  If there really is a God, believe me, he wouldn’t sit through an Irish Mass.  Needs more cowbell.

12-2pm.  Drinky poos with relatives we won’t see for another 365 days.  It’s a gathering of relatives in a ceremony known as “Gifts for Granny”.

2pm -4pm – Dinner.  Eat dinner, pull crackers..fall into chair and want to die.  That is unless you’re a child and you want to play with all of your toys.  I was a board game lover growing up, unfortunately for me, my family was not.  I was left playing hungry hungry hippos on my own.  This is not a one player game.

The evening has changed a lot down through the years and, of course, television is to be blamed for that.  We used to go up to a relative’s and play cards.  Games that seemingly had no rules and where Gran Aunty Kitty would cheat while wearing rosary beads around her neck.  But it was fun.  Beer in one hand, the other hand tucked into a box of quality street.

Nowadays we have a marathon of terrible soap operas from about 6 til 10 o clock.  Seemingly intelligent people betray all their God-Given intelligence and sit there like a zombie watching a story that has been dragged out for about 6 months conveniently unfold on Christmas day in an explosion of rape, domestic abuse and murder.  “Why did it take her so long to cop on to the fact that he killed him?”  “because it wasn’t Christmas yet”.

I like Christmas telly…christmas specials of father ted, only fools and horses, the royle family….programs like that…where families can laugh together.  Not cry about some poor fucker finally succumbing to a debilitating disease in a dingy flat with a 4 foot plastic christmas tree for company.  This, is not my idea of Christmas.

So, as well as banning the X-factor from doing a cover version of Bridge Over Troubled Water or some other classic, and getting number one…let’s also ban all the soap operas.  It’s a campaign that could surely get 2 million likes on the book face.

Anyway…enough from me…I hope i have you all excited for Santy now…feel free to share your christmas stories!

Until the next time…