Tis the season of joy – and the novelty apron!
You want
A Christmas cracker that goes BANG! and spills out a variety of colourful and/or useful items.
You’d settle for
A Christmas cracker that goes POP! and contains a gold paper crown and a tiny screwdriver.
You get
A Christmas cracker that makes no noise and contains a single tiddly-wink and a paper hat (pre-torn), and you don’t even get to keep any of it because your fellow cracker-puller cheated by clutching her half of the cracker in the middle.
You want
The perfect Christmas tree, tastefully decorated with costly white, silver and gold baubles.
You’d settle for
A tree that stands up straight, with working lights and a scattering of seasonal decorations.
You get
An overgrown twig with half its needles missing, decorated with four bits of cotton wool and a single electric light bulb, and topped by a loo-roll angel with a smiley face felt-tipped on.
You want
Turkey with all the trimmings.
You’d settle for
Chicken with one or two trimmings.
You get
Tofu lasagne with lentil mash, because a fortnight ago your 12-year-old niece decided to become a vegetarian, bless her.
You want
To whizz down a hill on a toboggan.
You’d settle for
Whizzing down a hill on a tray.
You get
A broken ankle from slipping on the black ice halfway up the hill.
You want
The real Santa coming down the chimney.
You’d settle for
Dad dressed up as Santa coming down the chimney.
You get
A half-dead pigeon coming down the chimney, with its left wing still flapping slightly.
You want
The doorbell rings, and 12 red-cheeked children sing O Little Town Of Bethlehem on your doorstep in perfect harmony while bright white snowflakes float gently to the ground.
You’d settle for
The doorbell rings, and a florid middle-aged gent sings the first two lines of I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day while his five-year-old daughter looks on aghast.
You get
Furious hammering on the door, and a morbidly obese couple ask if Geoff’s in, and when you tell them you’ve never heard of Geoff they swear at you and the man screams ‘We know where you live’ and the woman says, ‘Cut it out, Dave, he’s not worth it’.
You want
A happy Christmas lunch.
You’d settle for
A quiet Christmas lunch.
You get
A solitary Christmas lunch of a microwaved Turkey Dinner For One, while Radio 4’s Christmas edition of You And Yours plays in the background — an investigation into the dangers of contracting botulism from a microwaved Turkey Dinner For One. You want
A peaceful hour-anda-half drive to your mother’s on Boxing Day, because the roads are always clear on Boxing Day. You’d settle for A reasonable two-hour drive to your mother’s on Boxing Day, because for some reason a few other people had decided to take to the roads and there was a bit of a build-up around junction 19.
You get
Four-and-three-quarter hours there and five hours, 17 minutes back, with traffic nose-to-tail all the way because a million idiots had reckoned that the roads are always clear on Boxing Day.
You want
A Christmas TV special with your favourite singers and comedians.
You’d settle for
A repeat of Morecambe & Wise.
You get
Alan ‘Chatty Man’ Carr joshing around with a former Spice Girl, the Fat Man from Gogglebox and a major Hollywood star you’ve never heard of, with live music from the runner-up the year before last’s X Factor.
You want
A cashmere V-neck in pale blue or dark green.
You’d settle for
A colourful woolly scarf.
You get
A jocular corset-and-suspenders kitchen apron.