Today's the day I may finally have to admit to myself what I
have begun to fear but have been refusing to accept.
It’s a beautiful autumn
morning: blue sky, weak sun, cold enough for some people to be in coats and
scarves, not so cold for others still in shorts or T-shirts. It’s the sort of
day that makes you feel glad to be alive. And even though you’d rather be
somewhere else – on a Scottish mountain or a Cornish beach – you can walk from
the station to the office feeling pretty good about the day.
But then you hear the sound a moment before you see its
source. Ho, ho, ho. There’s a man dressed as Santa Claus outside a tube station.
No, wait, there are seven – seven! – people dressed as Santa Claus outside a
tube station, all shouting ho, ho, ho and handing out flyers.
My mood evaporates. It’s
not even mid-October, the clocks haven’t gone back, half-term is still a few
weeks away. Christmas should be a speck on the horizon, but the dimwits of marketing
have decreed that this is an appropriate time to put on a red coat and a false
beard while rustling up some false
jollity to sell .. what?
I don’t know as I refused to take a leaflet. Even if it was something I was interested in I
would make a point of ignoring it because
of this premature intrusion of Christmas. Understand that I have nothing against
Christmas, or retailers’ efforts to sell a few presents. But I loathe the way the
commercialisation of what used to be a 12 day season keeps forcing itself into our consciousness earlier
and earlier.
Even that might not be enough to make me a grumpy old man.
But I think mouthing ‘fuck off’ at the lead Santa – an excellent lip-reader as it
happened - probably is.
