‘Well, hello again. So soon too?’Well, you know, once you get typing…
Christmas day itself was great, proper family Christmas, open presents, wait for food, eat food, get hammered with family, pass out. No stress.
The best bit for me was watching my nephew and soon-to-be-niece. Brad is almost 7 and Leah is slightly older so they’re beyond believing in Santa, I think, but so sparklingly mercenary that pretty much any level of consumerism can be forgiven.
My sister decided to play a bit of a trick that may seem slightly cruel but had the sideeffect that it added a lot of magic back into Christmas for the kids.
Christmas Eve both kids had gone to stay at their respective mother or fathers’ house and once they had gone we turned one of my sisters bedrooms into a grotto complete with twinkly lights everwhere, gratuitous tinsel use and white sheets to cover the various bits of furniture we couldn’t shift.
Along comes Christmas afternoon and two rather hyper kids, just having had one Christmas morning already, are allowed to pass out the presents under the tree in the front room (Not noticing that the pile of presents is signifaicantly smaller than it had been when the left it. Mwahahahaha. Sorry, evil laugh not really required there probably).
One by one, as each label reads ‘To Grumpy’ or ‘To Grannie’ with only 3 or 4 actualy going to Leah or Brad, there is a growing look of disappointment on their little faces. Now they certainly didn’t tantrum or throw a dickie fit when a present wasn’t theirs but you could certainly tell the thought process was something along the lines of ‘For crying out loud when am I going to get something?’ For Brad it was more specific. He had got two wrestlers and literally jumped with joy because he assumed that the wrestling ring would soon follow. It didn’t, and with all the presents unwrapped he just said ‘Oh, I thought the ring would be there because I got the wrestlers’ and his face told of deep disappointment possibly requiring some time in therapy when he’s older.
Heartrending eh?
So, anyway, he improvised with a cardboard box from something else. (Ah, imagination, possibly the most magical thing of all.)
We all ate, plentifully, as is our wont in an upper-lower class household in England at Christmas.
(Ok, not sure what I’m saying with that line.)
Once everyone was suitably rested, the kids were allowed into the room they had been denied all day.
To say it was an orgy of tearing paper, a packaging massacre, a riot of ripping (ok enough now) would be an understatement.
To say that I didn’t spend the next few hours alternately working on getting drunk with the adults whilst nipping off to assist Brad or Leah with some particularly fiddly packaging or assembly of an especially tricky toy, would be a lie. Do you have any idea how many parts go together to make your average fins with rocket launcher, push button fold-out wings, missile firing Batmobile with integral but detachable Batcycle? No, I didn’t think so. Needless to say assembly of it is a job that should only be tackled by a slightly drunk 30-something relative pootling around quite happily with his inner child.
The evening that followed consisted mainly of a ruthless game of Trivial Pursuit (shots decided upon by the other team when you get a cheese wrong), boys vs girls, that succeeded in getting us completely annihilated. The men lost, despite having one more person on our team, by default, my sisters partner went off to the loo and never came back and about half-an-hour later so did I. It was three cheeses all.
So that was Christmas, there’s not much more to tell of any significance really, at least nothing I can think of right now. If there is I’ll let you know.
G’night.
(Well it would be if I wasn’t planning on writing my latest news right now)
