The joy of six at Christmas
THE outcry over the Government’s “rule of six” – an edict preventing more than half-a-dozen people gathering together – has passed me by. As a married man of three decades standing, I don’t know six people socially. But bombshell news, delivered by reporter David Bentley, that the traditional Christmas, with all its tinsel trimmings, may be cancelled by Covid has stirred something within me.
The scrapping of Birmingham’s German Market may not be the hammer-blow reported in the press.
If you enjoy talking moose heads, garden gnomes and bananas dipped in chocolate there is no better place than Birmingham’s slice of Bavaria, I’ll grant you that.
If you don’t, I believe the market will not be missed.
The doubts swirling round school nativities brought a degree of satisfaction. I began my infants school acting career by playing a pig in the stable.
For the last two years, I was relegated to “bale of hay, left stage”. That was less demanding than “bale of hay, right stage”. One of the Wise Men had to sit on him.
Shrimpton, who later went to Oxford, played Joseph for five consecutive years. He’s married now, but they can’t have kids, apparently, which shows you can take method acting too far.
Even Santa’s grotto will be subject to social distancing. It’s an elf and safety measure.
Matthew Wise, managing director of Great Grottos, which runs more than 200 Santa visiting sites in shopping and garden centres, expects grottos to “move away from enclosed structures towards more expansive, open settings”.
Santa’s set to play stadiums.
For those who love the holiday, report makes bleak reading.
It’s beginning to look a lot like lockdown. He writes: “We all thought life would be back to normal and we would be able to celebrate by eating, drinking, putting on our paper hats and pulling crackers with far more enthusiasm than normal.
“But that now looks like it may not be the case and many people are starting to wonder, is Christmas cancelled?”
He added: “Any guests you want to join you on Christmas Day would need to be part of your support bubble.
“Where that extra restriction isn’t in place, you would only need to limit the total number at the table to six, which could mean excluding family members. A family of five could only invite one grandparent.”
After a succession of arguments over the Christmas dinner table, I’m delighted by the prospect of barring a relative. He knows who he is.
Their
After a succession of arguments over the Christmas dinner table, I’m delighted by the prospect of barring a relative.
Christmas goose is
David’s cooked.
Their social bubble and truly burst.
I’m even heartened by the news of restricted numbers at church services.
At last year’s Christmas Eve service, our trendy vicar called for a minute’s silent contemplation of those less fortunate.
I turned to the family in the pew behind, affectionately known as The Scutters, and mouthed: “Guess who I’m thinking of?” I would’ve hugged them, but the youngest child was sporting blue gunk in his hair. It’s hue and coconut smell was an indicator the infant had visitors.
I am positively over-the-moon by news the “rule of six” will throw a spanner in the works is well of works’ Christmas parties.
The Christmas party season lost much of its allure when a fellow reporter - like me, at an age when he feared impending fossilisation – asked: “Is it still harassment if you’re holding mistletoe?”
The comment brought seasonal office shindigs into sharp perspective. Men of a certain age – and I am “of a certain age” – wait, like outcasts, on the party periphery, then pounce when a vulnerable female, her judgement impaired by alcohol, leaves the safety of the herd.
For 40 years, I have borne witness to the messy aftermath of works’ yuletide “do’s”. Careers have been ruined. Marriages destroyed. In one unsavoury incident, a criminal record spawned.
A green-gilled hack once emailed me the
morning after the night before, asking: “Did I do anything last night that could come back and bite me on the bum?”
I told it as it was. He’d called the managing director a prat and the boss’s wife a “trout” before riding the photocopier, shrieking “yippee ki yay” while firing off prints of his bare buttocks.
“Apart from that?” he emailed back.
He got away with the abuse and indecent exposure by lying to human resources the meltdown was spawned by a Twiglets allergy. The editor sniffed: “I expected more from our religious correspondent.”
Thankfully, I am now too old to be part of the tinsel trysts whispered about in office corridors: “You heard about her in accounts and the new guy in advertising? There were stiletto marks on the vinyl roof of his company Astra, apparently.”
Last year, a young, tipsy thing wearing a glittering outfit the size of a tea bag tottered over and mouthed above the Christmas classics: “Are you having a good time, Mike? It’s not too loud for you?”
One said loudly, slowly and deliberately: “It’s not too tough for you? The turkey, it’s not too tough for you?”
They adopted the starched smile of someone talking to a care home resident.
Call me a humbug, but I can do without Christmas, frankly.
“Same here,” said my drinking companion Colin, raising a glass. “Christmas stinks. Spending a shedload of money just because your kids ‘have to have it’, all their friends have got it, their lives will be so much better with it... it’s just emotional blackmail.”
Staring into his pint pot, Colin “Bloody electricity.” added: