Oh, you know, festive stuff
That is undoubtedly the best blog post title ever, as I’m sure you’ll agree. It’s just so eloquent, exciting, dramatic, committed. It makes you want to read the words that follow. It makes you drool with anticipation, in a way that your elderly aunt’s offer of yet another sodding mince pie no longer can. Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?
Oh.
Come back. Please.
Hello, and welcome to the obligatory festive blog post. In the words of the immortal Noddy Holder - though, in my case, nervously and softly spoken in a somewhat unplaceable southern English accent rather than bellowed in a broad rasp straight out of the streets of Walsall - it’s Christmas. Again.
It perhaps shows how regrettably caught up in the whole medium of blogging I have become, despite my frequent and vocal claims to the contrary, that for the past couple of days I have been thinking that I simply must write a Christmas entry. I must share my thoughts about the festive season with you, my dear reader. I have been convinced that you were eagerly anticipating my thoughts about presents, about Christmas shopping, about seasonal TV specials, about … well, you know, all that festive stuff. (I knew the title of this post would come in handy later.) You need this blogger’s Christmas message, just like you need to hear from Her Majesty on Christmas Day at three o’clock in the afternoon. It’s tradition, that’s what it is.
Honestly, who am I trying to kid? I should really get out more, but it’s far too cold away from my comforting fan heater. Maybe I just need some perspective on this thing called blog, and to realise that there is no rapt audience of onlookers beseeching, “Share with us your profound thoughts about Christmas, O Unreliable One!”
Undeterred by such entirely sensible thoughts of getting a grip on my relative insignificance in this virtual, online world, I started writing something yesterday afternoon. Now that I have read the words back to myself in the cold light of day (but under electric light because it’s already dark), I have realised that the whole post was rubbish. Utter rubbish. Claptrap. A mere retread of things I’ve said before. Yet another confirmation of my intense loathing for the festive season. Moreoever, it was another way of trying to deny that, secretly, what I would like more than anything is one of those stereotypically traditional Christmas celebrations complete with all the (turkey) trimmings. And the baubles. And the sudden arrival of hordes of relatives you haven’t seen since the same date twelve months before. The kind of Christmas we all sit watching on television, in seasonal movies and (as many of us fondly imagine) through the artificial snow-adorned windows of our neighbours. I’m a sucker for it, really I am. Deep within my psyche, I positively ooze Yuletide sentimentality. I just refuse to let anyone see it, and I bludgeon it into submission with a particularly hate-filled cracker if it tries to make a desperate bid for freedom after watching yet another rerun of The Great Escape.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your opinion, and despite sweating over a hot keyboard to bring you my musings, that annual piece of tinsel-topped bloggery will not be making an appearance this year. Because shortly after I started writing the words - almost exactly twenty-four hours ago - my sister and one of her delightful children turned up for a flying visit. They were only here for 90 minutes. Sounds like hardly any time at all, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider that I haven’t seen her since early July, when her visit seemed to go far more quickly because at the time I was lying half-dead in a hospital bed and my whole body was being purged with armfuls of medication. But even one and a half hours was long enough for my sister to get into her stride and start criticising my life, what I do, what I am, what I think. More or less everything, in fact. Oh, and then to accuse me of being singularly unfestive.
I attempted to listen, to understand, even to sympathise. I tried to remember that this was my sister and it was Christmas, so I should be filled with emotions that communicated fond familial warmth. Yet the only thought scuttling nervously through my head revolved around the words I wrote on that other website I used to maintain, after a similar sibling visit back in March 2004:
“Earlier this evening, and at very short notice, I ended up spending one and a half hours in the company of someone for whom I should feel something. Familial love, I suppose. But I didn’t. I tried, I really tried - just as I always do try on the rare occasions when we meet. I forced myself to remember all the events that we had been through together, all the things we had witnessed as children. I may not be able to remember what we said the last time we spoke on the phone - that’s another infrequent occurrence, anyway - but I can still remember our whispered late-night conversations from twenty or twenty-five years ago, or the harsh words we exchanged in the all too frequent explosions of anger that echoed throughout our childhood home. I hoped that would count for something, and would affect my emotions. But the sum total of what I felt can be summed up in two words. Not much.”
Sadly, “not much” still covers it. But this time there was a more profound effect too, and it came in the form of increasing nausea, confusion, a speeding heartbeat, a sudden desperate desire to be alone and away from voices, voices, voices - continually raised and braying voices. Suddenly, I succumbed to the most horrendous panic attack I have had in months. It has, in fact, been so long since I experienced one that all the unpleasant sensations such an attack sends through me felt entirely new, unfamiliar. As soon as the door closed and my sister disappeared back along the grateful distance provided by a motorway journey north, I did what I invariably do and sought solace in communication, in the calming words of a friend. But even that didn’t work, because I could barely type what I needed to say. Everything was blurred, shaking. Including me. I gave in to the inevitable and lay on my bed in the dark - shivering, sweating, my head being battered this way and that, curling myself up into a foetal position - and waited for the moment to pass. It did, eventually, but only after I’d vomited too.
I’ve never quite understood the humour of all those good-natured jokes about relatives visiting at Christmas. Can you tell? Yet I would still give anything to be able to feel. To feel something. And to enjoy that traditional couple of days opening presents, watching a repeat of a 1970s Morecambe and Wise TV special, and stuffing our faces with the kind of food that, even at your most ravenous, you would only ever consider eating once a year.
As it is, after yesterday’s little incident, I shall be making like the proverbial ostrich and burying my head in the sand. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t wish you and yours an exceptionally happy Christmas. Because I do. I always do. Many have assumed that because I have my own very personal reasons for not liking this particular midwinter celebration, I wish ill on everyone else who does happen to enjoy wearing Santa hats and singing along to the aforementioned Noddy Holder. Well, I wish to state categorically that I don’t. I have sent my ultra-minimalist Christmas cards and bought gifts for the few people who matter - that’s the part I’ve always liked the most, after all - and now I have my bunker all prepared for getting through the next few days.
It occurs to me that the best thing about writing a post like this for Christmas - a post that many of you might consider somewhat lacking in all the joys of the season - is that at least there’s barely anyone reading. Because, quite rightly, you’re all offline and being generally Christmassey.
So if you’re getting into the festive spirit, have a good one. And if you’re just knocking back the festive spirit in a bid to block it all out, I’ll see you on the other side.