Help! Everyone wants a piece of your (festive) perineum
‘ HOW ABOUT INBETWEEN Christmas and New Year?’ I can guarantee that if I conducted a digital stop and search of the nation’s phones, this would be the sentence uttered in Whatsapp chats across the land. The festive perineum, that beautifully slack period that stretches from Boxing Day to New Year’s Eve, was once a lazy time for nothing but a bag of easy peelers, box-fresh pyjamas and the bumper edition of the Radio Times. But times have changed. It is now The Rule that we meet everyone we’ve ever known for a drink in December, and as the run-up to Christmas is a hideous tangle of work and family events, friends must be stuffed into the five sacred days. Days that used to pass in a blur of warm cider but now involve the M25 and a yule log chucked around in the car boot.
Yes, over-scheduling is mainly my own fault. This year, as December became more hectic, I found myself offering up my perineum willy-nilly (I know!). I bought into the fantasy that it could stretch to meet-ups with 15 dear-yet-completely-disparate friends. But I’d also like to share the blame with our always-on, workobsessed culture that has transformed a pleasant lull into a stress-fest. We must now fill those five days or it will be A TERRIBLE WASTE. But how about we… just don’t? Let’s revel in the elastic glory that sees midwinter mornings seep into 4pm blackness in the blink of a box set. Let’s reclaim our perineums – let’s sit on them! Preferably, in box-fresh pyjamas.