They say that Christmas is the happy season. Andy Williams sang that it was “the most wonderful time of the year”. So why the bloody hell do we have to put up with a glut of maudlin and depressing adverts in the UK?
One of the worst at the moment is for Save the Children, with the most irritating piano tinkle being played with what appears to be a lump hammer. My TV gets muted the second that one comes on.
Then there’s my favourite radio station, Planet Rock. It’s not their fault, but being a commercial radio station they have to have adverts and they have little control over what they air. All year long you’ll be listening to great classic and modern rock music, only to have your mood repeatedly ballsed up by either the damned Co-op with its sickening funeral ads, or Macmillan rattling on about death from cancer. It ruins your listening pleasure. And before any do-gooders start going on about it, the situation would be precisely the same if I donated – I’d still be made to feel depressed. That isn’t right.
Out on the road, billboards are covered with “No one should be alone at Christmas” ads, and the BBC picked up on it last week to the extent that on Breakfast they had interview after interview with one homeless charity after another. As I write, there is an annoying Salvation Army advert with a suitably depressing and badly-sung rendition of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. This was followed by the f***ing Save the Children one again just as I was about to un-mute – and it was an extended version, running to considerably more than a minute. Of course, going back to the Beeb, they’ve had their world-class roving reporters stationed in post office sorting depots telling us how busy it is this time of year. Yes, we know. Just like last year, when you did precisely the same thing. And the year before that. And every other year. We get it, all right? The. Post. Office. Is. Busy. At. Christmas.
Actually, now I think about it, a much better story would have been how the Post Office’s utter incompetence throughout the year is merely exacerbated at Christmas. This week, I’ve taken delivery of an item which was two weeks late (so late, in fact, that I’d already reported it to the vendor), another which took 10 days, and a 1st class/signed for/next day shipment which came… the day after the next day. But I am still waiting for a replacement shipment for a further item which never turned up (after three weeks) – the replacement was sent last week has all the hallmarks of also having been lost. As I say, the Post Office is incompetent.
Last month, my parents had a letter from the local sorting office informing them that from immediate effect all post to their address would cease until further notice. You can imagine the effect this is going to have on people who are in their 70s and 80s, one of whom is almost blind, suddenly being told that they have got to travel to the sorting office to collect their mail. When I read the letter, I began to understand – and it was far from clear – that a postal employee had been “attacked” by a dog some 15-20 doors away. The letter gave the distinct impression that the Hound of the Baskervilles was on the loose, and it seems that mail for the entire street was stopped on this basis (houses round the back were unaffected, though laughably some of those were around a quarter of a mile closer). In actual fact, and as far as I can ascertain, the dog in question had apparently barked at the postal employee a couple of times in what was construed to be “an aggressive manner”. The dog – unfortunately an Alsatian, so likely to have been trained to tear the throats out of people under the guise of having been bought as “a guard dog” – is never let out and, to my knowledge, hadn’t managed to get out either. So it seems the Post Office is now applying Health & Safety (and, no doubt, Union stupidity) to imagined scenarios as well as real ones.
Then we have the cookery shows, with recipes that only the most pretentious of Daily Mail readers would ever think of using on Christmas Day. I mean, Brussels Sprouts are supposed to be boiled in salted water then eaten – they taste great like that. So why screw them (or carrots) up by tossing them in butter, honey, and bits of bacon. And that’s just one of the “simple” recipes. God help you if you turn on Nigella. Oh, yeah. And I already KNOW how to cook a turkey without injecting butter under the skin, rubbing Ralgex into it, or hanging it in the garage next to a jugged polecat for a fortnight. We get the same lecture – well, lectures, actually – every year, so I think I’ve got it now. And there’s only ONE decent stuffing for turkey – it’s called Norfolk Sage & Onion (Paxo if you really must). There’s no way I’m experimenting with pile of slop made using Italian sausage, ginger, or cranberry. And the same goes for gravy. All you need is stock or stock cubes and some of the bird juices and Brussels water (all right, and some onions and maybe a little garlic). But no chestnuts, Allspice, lemon grass, ginger, or anything else like that. And call me old fashioned, but I’ll also be serving it on something called “a plate”, and won’t be flinging it across a plank taken from the side of my shed. As for dessert, don’t get me started. Why is every Christmas dessert in this country bloody dark brown, filled with nuts, and tastes like freshly laid tarmac? I detest mince pies, Christmas cake, and Christmas pudding for this reason (well, that and the marzipan). I always have.
On the plus side, while I was shopping in Asda last week I saw a display of Lindt truffles, to which I’m not particularly partial, and was immediately drawn towards the unusual packaging of a white chocolate version. I love white chocolate, and to cut a long story short I ate a whole box! They ought to be illegal.
Why can’t other Christmas desserts be like this, and why does it take the Swiss to show us how?
Back to TV, and Apple – which specialises in pretentious adverts at the best of times – has come up with a really annoying one featuring whiny soul singers. That’s another mute button job whenever it comes on. The satellite music channels have been playing “classic” Christmas songs since at least November – the only problem being that their idea of “classic” is Mariah Carey, Wham, and various rap songs that were released in the same year as a Christmas and so meet the required criteria. I have only seen Slade’s genuine classic “Merry Christmas Everybody” once, and Wizzard’s “I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day” twice.
These are real classics. No one will ever write better Christmas songs than these – they’re happy and jolly, whereas modern attempts always dwell on depressing subjects (or sex and violence, however mild, if they’re rap-based).