Christmas

So are you all looking forward to Xmas then?

No? No, neither am I.

I don’t know about you, but I get depressed every year at Xmas time.

I think it’s because we are under so much pressure to enjoy ourselves.

You know, it’s a being inside a comedy club for 24 Hours.

Xmas is not the same as it used to be is it? It’s far too commercialised.

I wouldn’t mind so much if I was loaded.

But with the price of everything these days I can hardly afford fucking tinsel

Never mind a fucking pagan plastic tree to put it on.

Now it’s all about buying expensive gifts for each other that we can’t afford and spoiling the children with stereos and televisions that are better than the ones we have doon the stairs for ourselves!

I can remember the good old days, you know, when Xmas was Xmas. When all you got was an apple and an orange, 4 bits of wood, some nails and a hammer and told to go and make your toys. Those were the days.

But I do think Xmas has become a wee bit too commercial. I like the family getting together side of Xmas but I feel as though the Xmas spirit is kind of grudged now.

I’ll tell you what Xmas has come to in the street where I live.

For the whole of December all my neighbours hide behind their curtains, waiting for me to leave the house…. so they can run across the street and deliver my Xmas Card!

I’d come back in, find the card and say “Where the hell did this come from, I only went round to the back garden to empty the bin”

I open up the card and it says “Merry Xmas, from Tom & Mary”

I’m like “Tom and Mary, who the fuck’s Tom and Mary? Could they be a bit more specific?”

And the wife says “You know, Tom and Mary, from across the street. Mr & Mrs Watchamacallthem”

“Oh Mr & Mrs Watchamacallthem. Fuck. I suppose we’re now obliged to send them a card now”

There’s nothing I hate more than being obliged to do something.

The card reads ‘To Tom and Mary Watchamacallthem, Lots of Love…blah, blah, blah’ Oh I really mean it.

I’ve got this gene inside of me that makes me want to do the opposite of what I’m supposed to do. .

So I go and hand the neighbours their card in person. They really don’t know how to handle that.

“Oh hello. Eh, aren’t you Mr Whatshisface?”

“Yep, that’s me.”

Then when they ask me what I’m getting my wife for Xmas this year, I say “Oh I’m getting her the same as I got her last year, and the year before that and the year before that”

“What’s that?” they say, “Nothing” “What?”

“Nothing, I’m getting her absolutely bugger all”

You can see their brain short-circuiting when you tell them that one.

“What? Absolutely bugger all?”

You can see their brains short-circuiting when you tell them that one

“….it cannae be, it just cannae be”

And they fall down on the ground with sparks flying out their head

It doesn’t do my reputation in the street much good, I can tell you.

But every year my neighbours compete with each other to see who can put up the fanciest hi-tech decorations inside and outside their house

It’s not for their children you understand, they all left home years ago. This is sheer middle class competitiveness.

Driving up to my house at Xmas time, it’s like Blackpool Illuminations,

Until you get to my house, and it’s like ‘FUCK YOU, I don’t want to play’

There’s a big black hole where there should be some Neon lighting and Carol singers.

I guess that’s how I got my nickname in the street, Mr Scrooge or Stingy Bastard.

I try and defend myself by saying “Just because we are told that some geezer called Jesus used to do a bit of hands on healing over 2000 years ago, because of that I’ve got to trek round over congested shops every December, for the rest of my natural born life, that will be right.

Anyway, there is too much paper that gets wasted on wrapping paper and Xmas cards, think of the rainforests”

People usually let you off the hook, if you pull the environmental card out.

Well, they’ve got to really haven’t they, that’s why I use it.

Actually, that reminds me of a story. About 7 or eight months ago, I bought a table football table for the house. A guy at work was selling one and by sheer coincidence I was actually looking for one at the time. So I was delighted, my wife wasn’t too impressed with it though.

My wife was into that Feng Shui at the time and she’d just rearranged all the furniture in the living room and then I turn up with this table football tabe.

This thing is like Hampden Park in the middle of our living room.

My wife hates it. She says “It’s like a big useless piece of male energy”

I’m like “Look, I can’t afford a Ferrari so I have to make do with this for my cock extension”

“It ruins the ambience of the room” She claims. Actually she’s right, but after the huge argument we had it’s turned into a point of principle.

So anyway a couple of weeks ago I met the guy that sold me it as I was walking up the high street.

He asked me how I was enjoying the table football. I said, it was brilliant, I beat my wife 10-0 every night. She’s still to score a goal in 8 months; it’s done wonders for my self-esteem.

The wife’s not doing to good, although on the plus side her psychiatrist says she’s improving.

He then asked me what I was getting my wife for Xmas. I told him nothing. I don’t believe in Xmas.

He said “I bet your wife cooks your dinner every day and cleans the house”

I said “Yeah”

He started making me feel guilty. He said I was bang out of order and that I should be ashamed of myself.

I said, “Look, I don’t need society, to dictate to me a special day of the year that I should buy my wife a present, I buy her presents all year round. Every day is Xmas in my house.”

He said “Oh aye, what was the last present you bought her then?”

I said “ er, um….the Table football table?”

But I wasn’t always such a cynic. Let me tell you about the best Xmas card I ever got.

Not long after I got married and my wife had moved in to my old flat with me, a young couple moved in below us.

I think they liked their Ecstasy tablets. I think they messed up their brain a bit though, their short term memory is not what it should have been, they kept forgetting each other’s name.

All day long all you heard was “Who’s in the house, Who, who, who’s in the house”

I was like “You’re in the fucking house, it’s Andy and Sarah. Remember, at least that’s what you told me, you could have just made that up to cover your embarrassment at not knowing each other’s names right enough.”

So anyway, as it was close to Xmas, I thought I’d send them a nice card to welcome them to the street.

I thought I’d have a laugh so I wrote on the card “To the Happy Ravers, Merry Xmas”

Then I waited until they left the flat, and ran downstairs and posted it.

So nothing was said until a year later, when we got a card back from them.

Guess what it said? It said “Merry Xmas, to the Happy Shaggers…”

Well, I did say we were newly weds and our bed was particularly squeaky.

We had those wooden slats. I don’t know if you know or not, but they make a bloody racket those things.

It must have sounded as if we were shagging all night long but most of the time we were just turning over in our sleep.

If I were to send a card now with a wee joke in it, to my neighbours in Pleasantville.

It would probably read “To the silent neighbours from Heaven, merry Xmas”

And they would probably send one to us, something like,

“To the loudest, noisiest, most consistent, farters in the universe, put a cork in it for fuck’s sake, we’re trying to get some sleep in here, oh, by the way, Merry Xmas”

Well that’s what 5-year’s of married bliss does for you.

My wife and I have turned into the Fartymaniacs. ‘We’re fartymaniacs, we’re farty…’

We’ve invented a new form of communication for the Navy. It’s called Fart Code.

They haven’t quite taken it on board yet, as there is still some teething problems with it.

For instance, when I used to come home from nightshift, and my wife was still in bed, she would greet me like ‘FART, FART’, that mean’s ‘Hi dear, is that you home’

And I’d reply ‘FART’ that means, ‘What do you think?’

And then she’d say ‘FART, FART, FART’ that’s ‘And how was work’

And I’d reply ‘FART’ that means ‘shite, as usual’

And then she’d say ‘FART, FART, FART, FART, FART’, see, that was just a fart, that didnea mean anything.

Although if you were to translate that into fart code, it would mean,

‘Emergency, emergency, oxygen supplies are at an all time low, please put on your air mask immediately”, so you see how the Navy is not too keen on it just yet.

But why do we buy each other present’s that nobody needs or even wants at Xmas time, just because everyone else is doing it?

When you see someone with lots of Xmas presents, you say

“Is that you doing the Xmas shopping then?”

“Yeah, it’s a nightmare isn’t it?”

“Well why the fuck do you do it then?”

They say, “Oh it’s good for the children”

“Oh really. It’s good for the kids that you are up to your eyeballs in debt and take it out on them by screaming at them constantly. It’s good for the kids that they get everything they ever want just handed to them on a plate without even having to wash one dish. It’s good for the kids to believe in Santa Claus, only to find out one day that it’s all been a big hoax. The whole adult world was lying to them for the first 14 years of their life.

The kids ends up never fully trusting anyone ever again. That’s good for the kids is it?.”

“Oh you’re just a Scrooge, that’s all you are”

See, ye cannae win.

We spend a fortune on these kids, buying them all the latest gadgets and brand names just so they don’t get a hard time from everyone else’s spoilt little brat, for the crime of being different…perish the thought.

Take mobile phones for example, why do we buy 11 year old’s mobile phones.

Cause when the David Blunkett brings the curfew in, they’re not going to be very mobile are they?

The government says that keeping your kids indoors after dark is going to make the world a safer place to live. Aye right. They’re just going to rebel if you do that.

“Right Timothy, come on inside now, that’s the streetlights on, that’s the sign that you have to come in.”

“But Mum, it’s only 4 o’clock, school’s just finished and it’s the first day we’ve not had rain all year, can I not stay out and use my mobile phone just once.”

“No you can’t, I’m in enough trouble with you as it is young man, after you reported your own mother to the police for spanking your bum, after you sold our TV and Video for Heroin money, so get inside now, you can use your mobile in the house”

“I’ll tell you what mum, you can stick your mobile and your super nintendo and your portable DVD player up your arse. I’m staying outside and me and my friends are going to play a new game called UN PEACEKEEPERS. We’re going on a peacekeeping mission to the town centre and we’ll stab anyone who tries to fuck with us. Including you, so fuck off.”

But the poor kid’s who don’t rebel though, they have to phone each other from their parent’s bathroom’s every night just because every other room in the house has a nice safe cancer free stationary phone in it and you wouldn’t want to use that because you have to use your 60 minutes of free calltime every month, just to make sure you get your full entitlement of radiation, regardless of whether or not you actually need to phone anyone or not.

If aliens were watching us go through the Xmas ritual every year it would be very interesting wouldn’t it?

They could make documentaries like David Attenborough about us.

“Yes, these strange creatures, shop all year round, but December is a special month.

A few of them put up what they call the Xmas lights around the shopping area and this sets off the humans into a shopping frenzy.

They just can’t collect enough shit to pass amongst each other. Shit which is no good to anyone.

Then on Xmas Day itself they exchange the shit and pull apart bits of paper which go bang and then throw that particularly useless shitty plastic toy straight into the bin and tell each other some of the worst jokes in the universes history.

After stuffing themselves full to the brim at dinner they then collapse on the sofa and pass out for 4 hours while their body tries to digest a months worth of food.

And then they start to shop again the very next day, to buy all the shit that was too shit to buy in the first place but because it’s slightly cheaper it turns it into bargain shit, which is always a good thing.

This is known as the Xmas Sales.”

Anyone here been doing any Xmas shopping recently?

I love watching people doing their Xmas shopping. I cannae get enough of it. I think it’s absolutely superb. You see everyone getting totally stressed to the max.

“Oh what are we going to buy yer Uncle Harry? And we’ve still not got anything for yer Auntie Susan.

And God know’s what yer distant 3rd cousin, twice removed Charlie the Chimpanzee doon at the local zoo wants this year.

The zoo hasn’t gave us his Xmas wish list yet”

I’m like take it easy, chill out. There’s no need to panic. The answer to Xmas shopping is obvious innit? Just get everyone the exact opposite of what they ask for.

For instance, before I stopped buying presents for my wife she was always going on about Diamonds, right.

It was ‘Diamonds this and diamonds that’, so instead I got her a signed photograph of Kenneth Williams.

It was in a frame, I’m not a cheapskate.

She was like “Eh, what’s this?”

I was like “It’s a framed signed photo of Kenneth Williams, what does it look like?

She said, “Who the hell is Kenneth Williams?”

I played dumb, “I thought you liked Kenneth Williams”

“Whatever gave you that impression” she said.

I said, “Well, you do a good impersonation of him with that big nose of yours – always asking me where I’ve been every night when I stumble in the door at 2.30 am”

So she’s told me not to bother getting her a present ever again. See, it works a treat every time.

If everyone did that we wouldn’t have to go through the same bloody charade every year, and we could all get on with enjoying our lives.

Mind you, my wife’s still not happy on Xmas day, when I don’t buy her a present.

See, ye just cannae win.

People think I’m a ba’ humbug but like I said, I think everyday should be Xmas.

Except I wouldn’t bother with all that Santa Claus and Jesus bullshit. And instead just focus on the Queen’s speech instead.

I love the Queen’s speech. I’ve got every episode for the past 16 years on tape. I must admit, they are a bit samey, but I never get tired of them.

It’s like that Rikki Fulton doing the Traffic Cop sketch in Scotch and Wry.

Every year when he got off his motorcycle you knew he was going to pull back his goggles and they’d fly off over his helmet and every year it cracked you up. Just because you know it’s coming.

And the Queen speech, does the same for me.

“Hello, it’s me. I’m yer Queen”

Now that’s a killer of a first line, right there”

“Aye and we’re all yer bees, Buzz, Buzz, Buzz”

Then she say’s, “Ah it’s been a guid year, this year”

That’s a quality second line as well. I don’t know who she get’s to write her scripts for her but give that man a CBE.

I’m usually in tears by the end of it.

See that was the fault of Only Fools and Horses, they made too many episodes and they were over an hour long for the Xmas specials, wheras the Queen’s speech, once a year, for 10 minutes, it keeps it fresh you know.

Always leave the audience wanting more.

Mind you if we had Xmas every day then I suppose you’d soon get sick of the Queen on TV, a bit like Ant and Dec really, although to be fair I was sick of them after 3.1 seconds.

The Queen changed up her speech a couple of years ago,

“Hello poor people, are you having a good xmas? are you all up to your eyeballs in debt? I got a new country today, Afghanistan.

Lots of money from the poppies – the ones we export and the ones we sell on rememberence day. Its one of my favourite plants. We specialise in the Heroin trade you know?”

So at least she’s not hiding anything, well apart from her reptile face that is.

And on that thought, Merry Fuckin’ Xmas eh.