So, this is Christmas
It was midway through December when I realised we'd arrived in this most latterly month of the year, the one that throws up Christmas with its tinsel, baubles and epileptic lighting, and your therapist asks with extra intensity: are you ok? I walk past Her Majesty's newly privatised* Royal Mail service and Dalston is dribbling all over the footpath and I instantly decide not to 'do cards' this year. Like roads in Beijing, schools in Malaysia and apartments on the Costa del Sol, I think we need to trial a time-share arrangement for major holidays. This being the most major, it may gain more traction than the baby-share scheme I floated with Miriam a few years back.
I'm escaping the city for a spot in Devon promised to be remote, with an open fire and cows. I picked up a hire car today and jerked my way around London for a couple of hours picking up supplies so I can go off the grid in a somewhat posh way over the next ten days in my new, sort-of-posh Aigle gumboots. It's wet due west, but in the city it's still mild and most of the ice rinks have closed because they've melted.
I tried to get festive by engaging with a homeless man hawking for money in a cafe. I knew the cafe had nice, substantial sandwiches and I asked if he'd like one. They're ridiculously expensive, but I wanted to get in the giving spirit. He told me he'd really rather go to McDonalds and buy a burger and a cup of tea. But why, I spluttered––pointing and appealing to the nice looking sandwiches, freshly made, laid out on the counter. He rubbed his hands together and said but the burgers at McDonalds are delicious and I love them. Then he said, I'm Jamaican, Jamaicans love burgers... And I thought aren't Jamaicans supposed to love chicken, which is a hugely stereotypical thing to think... Finding no suitable counter argument, I asked again - are you sure you wouldn't like a sandwich, while reaching for my wallet and wondering why I was acting so constipated all of a sudden. Could I be such a snob I couldn't accept the idea of my money––what a few pounds––being spent at McDonalds? What was it I was giving him and why? There I was judging a sandwich superior to a burger, when surely the superiority lay with the gift of self-determination, so I deferred to his better judgement and gave him the means to do what he will... I hope you too do what you want this Christmas! It's not like being good is getting us far. Merry, merry!
*this month's recommended reading––James Meek, Private Island. Who owns England?? And it's not who you think.
I borrowed this bit for ten days, but I've since given it back.