I don’t want to be a Grouse... so here’s to those dreaming of a light Christmas

I’ve been out with the dog on several occasions recently during darkling hours (not difficult since those tend to start about the back of three at the moment in our neck of the woods – roll on tomorrow, the shortest day).

And I can exclusively reveal to those of you who are – sensibly in my view – battening down the hatches before The Repair Shop comes on telly and reaching reflexively for the corkscrew, that it’s begun to look a lot like Christmas.

There’s not, as they say, much that passes me by.

This borrowed observation (thank you, Perry Como), may seem a bit late for some of you, of course, who have been at all this kind of festive faffing since approximately the end of July.

But you have to realise who you are dealing with here and it’s not the Ghost or even the Stark Reality of Christmas Present.

I put up the tree yesterday. What else do you want from me?

So, looking a lot like Christmas? Much, much more so than usual, I judge, even this late into the run-up.

Round our way it is, anyway, especially outside.

There are front doors festooned with coloured flashers, patios awash with shining sleighs, herds of twinkling reindeer sweeping majestically across the stormdamaged messes that pass for lawns and lights of all kinds of Led-ness fairly hingin’ from the branches of every available tree/ shrub.

I’ll be surprised if anyone in this neighbourhood gets a wink of sleep before Twelfth Night.

Light pollution a’weys, in fact, and jolly cheery it is too, even to an old Grinch like me.

And the dog is properly intrigued. Even if his default setting when faced with a free-standing, blow-up scene of Father Christmas and assorted elves wafting gently in the Arctic and/or Baltic breezes, is to bark at it, sniff it with a level of disdain usually associated more with cats than canines and do his business on its cute, black, fur-topped bootees.

The animal is a critic, it would appear and they do say you get like the people you live with…

By way of shame-faced confession, I used to love to do a great big blingy tree each year, with so many baubles and so much tinsel that you couldn’t actually see the tree for the garish goods.

This was chiefly to annoy my stepson who is a man of artistic good taste and the highlight of whose festive season it was to fall down giggling like a Smash Martian at his stepmother’s over-the-top attempts to pretend she was joining in the spirit of Christmas without it coming out of a bottle.

And it gets worse.

Once, a few years ago, when the neighbours’ children were still wee and impressionable, we sneaked out in the middle of the night and attached an inflatable Santa to the wall at the bottom of our garden, much to the sniggering joy of the rest of the street, who know us far too well to be taken in by demonstrations of fake jollity and festively generous foolery.

Kind of like ourselves, Mr Claus ho-hoho-ed like a good ’un for a couple of days, then deflated to the point of uselessness within that limbo that takes place between Boxing Day and Hogmanay.

But there you are. The gesture was made. And it seems like light-hearted light-sabreing is the occupation of the moment for many in our airt and I have no doubt, much further afield.

The government may be gaslighting us but we’re hitting the outside electrics and the portable battery packs in a big way. Like there was no tomorrow, in fact. With that in mind, I hope all those worthy people hoping to see the back of fossil fuel in the next few years are taking account of this increasing seasonal power surge, otherwise for the rest of us, it’ll be back to dripping candles and fervently hoping you’ve installed the right kind of Scottish Government-approved smoke/ heat/carbon monoxide alarms.

Any road up, when there is little other light in the Omicron-tinged darkness, go for it, I say.

In the words of the immortal Frankie Howerd, please yourselves.

Actually, worryingly, I just typed “please your-elves” there. Which shows that the notion of this season and all its concomitant hoo-hah is obviously much more deeply embedded in my otherwise fun-resistant subconscious than I am ever going to admit to. These festive beggars creep in everywhere, don’t they? All that goodwill, shouldn’t be allowed…

In our house, however, we do still like to stick to one or two time-honoured traditions that change little over the years.

So you will, if you listen closely as you carol sing your merry way around your local community or even hurry your dog past our light-free facade, very probably be able to hear these faint strains echoing from behind our firmly locked door on Christmas Eve.

“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring – they’d finished the Grouse…”

Light pollution a’weys and jolly cheery it is too, even to me

FESTIVE CHEER: These children are excited to meet Santa Claus himself at the Dundee West End Christmas lights switch-on.