‘Black Friday . . . Cyber Monday. . . Weather Bomb with depressing tags like that doing the rounds it’s no wonder many of us don’t feel particularly jolly.’
“Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
“If you haven’t got a penny a ha’penny will do, if you haven’t got a ha’ppenny then God bless you!”
This Victorian classic has certainly got one thing right Christmas is indeed coming, and coming fast. But I doubt there are many geese being fattened. These days it’s more a roast-in-the-bag turkey washed down with a bottle of cheap plonk. As for pennies, well every one is a prisoner as they say. So the old man will just have to wait until our own hats have been filled.
Yip, the Christmas spirit, well that is definitely in short supply, especially since the new drink drive limit came into force.
Many restaurants, pubs and clubs are reporting a drop in trade because their paranoid customers are unduly worried about being caught the next day if they have an extra glass of wine.
The price of petrol is at a 10-year low, pay growth is finally outstripping inflation and the number of unemployed continues to fall, but Christmas cheer seems to be dropping faster than Santa in a chimney with many Scottish retailers reporting a massive drop in the jingling of their tills.
Black Friday . . . Cyber Monday. . . Weather Bomb with depressing tags like that doing the rounds it’s no wonder many of us don’t feel particularly jolly.
Nothing, though, seems to have dampened the festive spirits of those crackers at Westminster. Let’s face it, nothing ever does.
They are, after all, just like their Dickensian forefathers, feeding on the fatted goose, duck or calf and relishing every opportunity to take the pennies back out the old man’s hat.
I have to shamefully admit I did chuckle at Prime Ministers Questions when the UK’s biggest joker, PM David Cameron, surprisingly made me guffaw!
His put downs of quivering Ed Jellybam were the stuff of pantos, especially when he yelled to a packed chamber that Ed was a “complete waste of space” and that he “felt sorry” for his Labour MPs as their Christmas would be a Silent Night.
But then, after bragging about non-stop partying a fortnight ago, I caught a stinker of a cold and, like Fifa’s President Seb Blatter, it just refuses to budge. So that probably accounts for my current malaise and depressed view of this year’s festive run in.
But without burning a hole through my rose tinted specs, the days of Christmas Past seemed to feel a lot more, well, Christmassy.
Something is missing. Maybe we need some snow. Or perhaps we need new singalong songs, because Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day now has a very hollow ring to it. Whatever it is I hope the spirit of Christmas comes back soon, and certainly before the big day.
Now what was that Slade song that cheers everyone up? Ah, got it . . .
“So here it is Merry Christmas everybody’s having fun, look to the future now it’s only just beguuuuun!”
Aye, that makes me feel better already!
Merry Christmas everyone!
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