Time to get back to reality
ON Boxing Day, as nothing much else had happened, the BBC TV news led with the sales, interviewing people with armfuls of carrier bags in shopping malls up and down the country. Happy at home having just returned from a wet, windy and muddy country walk, I wondered – as I do every year – why on earth anybody wants to go shopping on Boxing Day.
After spending a fair amount of money in the run-up to Christmas, which I am very happy to do, I am even happier to not spend any money for a few days. There are sales for weeks before Christmas anyway so why does the idea of the Boxing Day sale still draw us in?
I’d go further. I actually couldn’t bear to trail off to a shopping mall and deal with the crowds, the heat and the horrible prospect of spending yet more money on stuff I don’t really need.
For though we always pride ourselves on finding bargains as though we’re being ever so thrifty, the fact is many of us are simply addicted to shopping as an activity. I don’t want to shop online either. I simply want a break from rampant consumerism.
Of course this spending drives the economy so it wouldn’t do if everyone was like me. Perhaps all these other people shop so I don’t have to. Thanks.
One cheerful woman interviewed
on the telly said that after Christmas it was “nice to get out”. I can see that. Christmas can be claustrophobic and your emotions seesaw from a lovely childish preChristmas excitement when the world seems full of wonders to a post-Christmas emotional hangover when all you want more than anything is for everything to get back to normal again, for the dull daily grind to reassert itself.
But there is something I really like about the eerie quiet in the days after Christmas. Because if you’re not actually in London’s Oxford Street or one of the big shopping centres then our towns are almost empty, as are trains and buses. You hear your own footsteps walking down the street, people even greet each other in passing. For a couple of days it seems as though everything hangs in the balance as though – weirdly – everything could be different from now on.
And then after the lull it’s New Year, with looking back and resolutions. Of course a new year is a good time for all this but there’s also something about this seasonal limbo which forces you to take stock. Being alone with your thoughts can be a mixed blessing too. For most of us the interlude between Christmas and New Year is probably quite long enough.
So let’s get back to normal. Please. And a happy New Year to all my readers. I wouldn’t be here without you.
AS my colleagues Richard and Judy write today we too had no offspring with us on Christmas Day. “What do you miss most about me mum?” asked my younger son on the phone. I realised it was him appearing in the kitchen when the turkey was almost cooked and getting under my feet while he calmly made himself a full English breakfast. He’d eat that, followed in quick succession by a full Christmas dinner. Maddening. But this year I’d have given anything to see him looming over the cooker deploying the egg slice.
MY card game of choice is Happy Families so I was sadly out of my depth watching the new film Molly’s Game. Based on a true story, Jessica Chastain plays Molly Bloom who ran illegal, high-stakes poker games in LA and New York attended by film stars, business moguls and various high-rolling sleazeballs. In 2013 the FBI arrested her for racketeering.
Every character is so whip smart and the dialogue so rat-a-tat-tat that even if you understand poker you’ll still feel like a dolt. Idris Elba, more alpha than any male has a right to be, is upstaged only by Jessica Chastain’s cleavage. Not so much a feelgood movie as a feel frumpy and stupid movie. Well I did anyway.
Davina McCall has said that after the menopause women no longer care if they appeal to men. To which I say, mascara wand in hand, cobblers.