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.