Christmas Checklist for Parents

 

Well folks, we’re in the final days before Christmas. Here is your checklist to ensure you’re doing it properly

Decorations:

Is it November?          No: [  ]        Yes: [  ] Then it isn’t time to put the tree up yet. What are you? A nine-year-old?

OK, It’s December now.

Bought tree                                                                                  [  ]

Real tree?               Yes:        [  ]                     No:         [  ] Don’t be an idiot. Go out and buy a real tree

Have you bought a real tree this time?                                [  ] Good. Now move on to the next task

Left tree in back room/garage/shed for a week                 [  ]

Has the tree started to die yet?                                               [  ]

Tree put up in the house                                                           [  ]

Tree not quite straight                                                               [  ]

Argument over whether tree is straight                              [  ]

Angrily insisted that tree needs to be perfect                    [  ]

Been told by your spouse/partner not to be such a child               [  ]

Shouted at your annoying children who keep getting in the way    [  ] Oh, come on, they only want to help

Untangled lights                                                                          [  ]

Had argument over how to do the lights                             [  ]

From the bottom up       [  ]                           Top down         [  ] Excellent! You’ve done it right!

Place the sacred ornament on the top of the tree            [  ]

Comment on how old some of the ornaments are           [  ]

Picked out your favourite ornament from your childhood  [  ]

Children not giving a toss about your favourite childhood ornament  [  ]

Tree covered in tacky chintz                                                    [  ]

Needles all fallen off within 48 hours                                  [  ]

 

Presents:

Bought all presents by 1st December                                    [  ] Ooh. Yeah. Suuure you did.

It’s 18th December and you haven’t bought anything    [  ]

Which lunchtime are you planning on dashing into town and doing the last minute panic:

21st: [  ]                22nd: [  ]              23rd: [  ]               24th: [  ] (Add +5 Stress Points per day)

Browsed German-style Christmas market                         [  ]

Bought something stupid and expensive from Christmas market               [  ]

Eaten something fattening and sickly from Christmas market      [  ]

Observed busker                                                                           [  ]

Is the busker…
Drunk [  ]             Offensive [  ]      Incompetent [  ]                  Possibly dangerous [  ]                   Horrifyingly depressing [  ]           Surprisingly brilliant [  ]                  “Experimental” [  ]           Owning some quite snazzy and expensive gear, including amps and effects pedals [  ]             From another country playing what your grandmother would call ” funny tunes on a funny instrument” [  ]              A former schoolmate [  ]

You have:
Been approached by a charity collecter                                                [  ]

Snarled at a charity collecter                                                                    [  ]

Become very sweaty whilst running around the shops                   [  ]

Got a nagging chest pain                                                                           [  ] It’s normal, don’t worry

Forgotten to buy something for a member of your family             [  ]

Started crying                                                                                               [  ]

Spent over £400 in one hour                                                                   [  ]

Thought “fuck this shit” and decided to come back tomorrow     [  ]

 

 

I love the smell of burned sugar at this time of year…

 

 

Socialising:

Been to the office party                                                                            [  ]

Regretted it                                                                                                   [  ]

Behaved atrociously at the office party                                               [  ]

Did something at the office party you really shouldn’t have done, and nobody must ever know [  ]

Gave the office party a miss                                                                    [  ] Well done.

Got drunk on a week night                                                                      [  ]

Got drunk knowing you’ve got work tomorrow                                [  ]

Seen the in-laws on a day that is not Christmas Day/Boxing Day          [  ]

Had to drive bloody miles to see the in-laws                                    [  ]

Rather dreaded seeing the in-laws                                                       [  ]

Seen people you only see this time every year                                   [  ]

Gone up the pub more than once in a single week                            [  ]

Had friends round for mince pies                                                            [  ]

Had an old friend drop by                                                                           [  ]

Had an unexpected person show up uninvited, who then outstayed their welcome        [  ]

Just wished to not have so many people spontaneously visit over Christmas, when there’s so much to do. It’s nice to see them, just not on the 23rd Dec, when everything is getting a bit much        [  ]

Written cards for people you only contact once a year (by card) at Christmas       [  ]

Got a card from someone you haven’t seen in years and don’t really care much for anymore[  ]

Wished colleagues an awkward ‘Merry Christmas!’                          [  ]

Wished people who work in shops a ‘Merry Christmas!’                 [  ]

Forgotten to send cards to some people you actually care about   [  ]

Got drunk, looked at your friends on Facebook, and got jealous of their perfect fucking lives           [  ]

Got drunk, looked up exes and old enemies on Facebook, and got profoundly depressed at how bitterly unfair life is             [  ]

Got sad about friends you don’t see anymore   [  ]

Been to church, even though you’re an atheist, because you like singing carols  [  ]

Sung all the proper harmonies to the carols                                  [  ]

Made up your own harmonies                                                             [  ]

Attempted the descant part to ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’            [  ] Heh! Awesome, innit?

Been to a school nativity                                                                       [  ]

Got a bit teary at the school nativity                                                 [  ]

Thought your kid nailed it as the third sheep                                [  ]

Thought the girl playing Mary this year was an attention-hogging squit and wished her parents would stop gloating about it in the playground            [  ]

Had to make your child’s class teacher a card                               [  ]

Ran into your child’s class teacher in the pub                               [  ]

Just wanted a quiet evening with your spouse/partner               [  ]

 

Your Secret Santa present this year is… some lube!

 

CHRISTMAS DAY

Tidied the house in time for Christmas                                                                 [  ]

Had an argument about tidying the house for Christmas                                [  ]

Ended up not completely tidying the house in time for Christmas              [  ]

Put empty stockings out                                                                                              [  ]

Filled stockings and placed them quietly, but still managed to wake a small child, thus ruining Santa Claus and Christmas forever, you absolute bastard                [  ]

Hugged stocking before opening presents, just to feel what it’s like to hug Christmas      [  ]

Opened stocking                                                                                                              [  ]

Got surprisingly brilliant stocking fillers                                                                [  ]

Cooked Christmas dinner                                                                                             [  ]

Did you? Reeeeaaallly? Or did you just help out in the kitchen?                       [  ]

Lost temper at small children demanding to open presents while adults run around trying to get food done                                                                                                                 [  ]

Had a cry in a quiet room somewhere                                                                        [  ]

Worn rather dazzly clothes you wouldn’t normally wear                                    [  ]

Worn any old crap because you’ve given up on Christmas now                         [  ]

Drunk champagne and pretended it’s nice                                                              [  ]

Drunk brandy and didn’t bother pretending to like it, but just winced and went “Uuuchhuchhuuuchh” [  ]

Eaten turkey with all the trimmings                              [  ]

Eaten a ‘Turkey Crown’                                                      [  ] That’s lazy of you

Eaten goose                                                                             [  ] Pretentious Dickensian twat

Eaten some other meat thing that is neither turkey or goose         [  ] You’re not even trying

Vegetarian?                                                                               [  ] Oh, bad luck

Failed to eat a mince pie at any point over Christmas and got a bit cross about it when you realised  [  ]

Tried to light the Christmas pudding, got a sputtering flame that dies within seconds, everyone still goes “Oooooh!”   [  ]

Eaten far too much, felt ill, eaten some more, felt better, eaten some more at 6pm, felt really sick [  ]

Eaten a meal consisting of just Christmas Cake            [  ]

Got presents you wanted                                                       [  ]

Got presents you didn’t know you wanted that are totally ace                    [  ]

Got presents you actually needed as a practical thing, but didn’t want as a present because it’s not as much fun as a Playstation e.g. hammer            [  ] “Oh, that’s really handy!”

Got horrible clothes from a well-meaning relative           [  ]

Got something horrible from a relative you’ve never liked, who has therefore just successfully trolled you           [  ]

Had an argument with an adult family member who is not spouse/partner           [  ]

Had a political argument                                                            [  ]

Watched the Queen’s Speech, even though you hate the Royal Family  [  ]

Said something rude about the Queen, and upsetting at least two adult members of your family   [  ]

Said something accidentally fascistic that shocks everyone in the room more than you intended to (e.g. “Everyone on X-Factor deserves to die starving, and suffering from Typhus in a Gulag”)  [  ]

Become a total pariah within the family due to your outrageous views   [  ]

Fallen asleep                                                                                                                [  ]

Pretended to fall asleep to avoid the washing up                                             [  ]

Done (or at least helped with) the washing up                                                   [  ] Well done

Watched the plebdazzle Christmas Night telly on a mainstream channel            [  ]

Watched a worthy art documentary on one of the minor channels, or something horribly depressing about the Middle East                 [  ]

Stayed up far too late on Christmas Night after everyone has gone to bed watching the tree lights twinkling and trying to remember what Christmas was like as a child      [  ]

 

 

It was all going really well, and then some fucking idiot said “You know, President Trump is gonna make America great again…”

 

 

FILMS:

Elf                                                          [  ]

It’s a Wonderful Life                       [  ]

Casablanca                                          [  ]

Citizen Kane                                       [  ]

The Wizard of Oz                              [  ]

Return to Oz                                      [  ] Oooh, dark

Muppet Christmas Carol               [  ]

Muppet Treasure Island                [  ]

Any other Muppet film                 [  ]

Labyrinth                                          [  ] Heh! Bowie’s bulge…

The Spy Who Loved Me                [  ]

Any Bond film that is not The Spy Who Loved Me   [  ] Hard luck, old bean

The Godfather Part II                     [  ]

Raiders of the Lost Ark                  [  ] Awww yissss!

Anything  Disney/Pixar                  [  ]           [  ]           [  ]           [  ]           [  ]           [  ]           [  ]           [  ]           [  ]

Anything non-Pixar CGI                 [  ]

Gremlins                                              [  ]

Die Hard                                               [  ]

Airplane!                                             [  ] Hoooo, fuck yeah!

One of those awful seasonal tie-in shorts of a CGI movie e.g. ‘Shrek the Halls’  [  ]

Miracle on 34th St                            [  ] +35 points if it’s the original (although the 1994 remake is cute)

Trading Places                                   [  ]

Scrooge                                               [  ]

Scrooged                                             [  ]

The Nightmare Before Christmas              [  ] You utter Goth

Watching The Nightmare Before Christmas with your kids        [  ] Training your kids to be Goths, I see!

Santa Claus The Movie                  [  ] Yuck.

Zulu                                                     [  ]

The Box of Delights                        [  ] Yes, I know it’s not a film. It’s still essential Chrimble viewing though.

 

 

POST-CHRISTMAS:

Had to travel many miles to several different locations, because either your parents (or the in-laws, or both) divorced years ago, live far apart from each other, won’t be in the same room as each other, and yet selfishly insist that you come and visit them at Christmas, and sulk like petulant teenagers if you threaten not to    [  ]

Decide on one of the many journeys between relatives that next year you’re going to do Christmas without them, or they’ll have to suck it up and be civil to each other for the first time in 24 years. Either that or build a Thunderdome in the garden and they can be locked in there for the duration          [  ]

Hit the sales like a boss despite smashing through your overdraft limit in the run-up to Christmas                [  ]

Had a metric tonne of leftovers to consume                                              [  ]

Eaten more than you should                                                                            [  ]

Decided to go on a diet                                                                                       [  ]

Eaten so much that you’re actually looking forward to commencing the diet        [  ]

Seen all the people you actually wanted to see                                          [  ]

Had a really nice evening with old friends                                                  [  ]

Had a really awkward evening with old friends                                         [  ]

Irritably demanded members of your family get off their shiny new digital devices and insisted on proper family time, thus creating an atmosphere of simmering resentment           [  ]

Insisted on going out for a brisk family walk and get howled at by your children for getting them out of the house and away from their exciting new presents                   [  ]

Come home from a brisk family walk feeling as though your bone marrow has been frozen solid   [  ]

Lit a fire to warm your bones and felt like a country squire                  [  ]

Played a board game                                                                                           [  ]

Board game causes argument                                                                         [  ]

Had to go into work between Christmas and New Year, and wished you’d booked time off because no other fucker is in work                                                                [  ]

Gone to a panto                                                                                                    [  ]

Gone to a big starry panto with a Grade-Q Reality TV celeb as the star attraction, laughed like a drain, took part in all the panto-heckling, and embarrassed your kids who are too old for pantos anyway                 [  ]

Gone to a local amateur panto and found quite a lot of the jokes to be racist/sexist/homophobic   [  ]

Made plans in advance for New Year’s Eve                                                           [  ]

Totally failed to make plans for New Year’s Eve                                                 [  ]

Ended up going to a crap party on New Year’s Eve                                            [  ]

Ended up doing nothing for New Year’s Eve                                                       [  ]

Made resolutions for the New Year                                                                        [  ]

Promised your spouse/partner to turn over a new leaf                                    [  ]

Fully intend to keep that promise                                                      [  ] Good luck with that!

Taken down the decorations in a forlorn manner and gone back to work with great reluctance, and realised that without the sparkly Christmas ephemera up to dazzle and distract you, this is a really dark, grey, and miserable time of year   [  ]

Realised that, all things considered, you had a pretty damn good Christmas         [  ]

 

CHRISTMAS: Adults Vs Children

What, already? Fuuuuck.

Fucking hell, it gets earlier every year. There ought to be a law. They’re starting the songs and the mince pies in the supermarkets, and it’s October. It’s as if they’re sadists. You know they actually start the adverts in September now… well, the perfume ones anyway. God, there’s another fucking article about how we’re not allowed to call it Christmas anymore, which is bollocks. Look, I’ll say CHRISTMAS really loud, and nobody will complain because everything says CHRISTMAS anyway, and the stuff about school plays is a load of hogwash, they are having a proper Nativity again, let’s just hope there isn’t a fight between parents this time round. And those sodding adverts on the telly! If it’s got a plethora of ways of firing plastic things that will blind you, and it’s delivered through the medium of shouting, it’s for boys. If it’s pink, and has lots of giggling in the adverts and references to hair or clothes or makeup, it’s for girls. Fuck me, really?

Is it Christmas yet? Is it Christmas yet? Is it Christmas yet? Is it Christmas YET? Is it Christmas yet? Is it Christmas yet? How about now? When will it be Christmas? There’s a toy I want! It’s shiny and got buttons and makes noises! It’s a bit like a DS! Liam in my class says his dad invented the DS! I want a DS! Why can’t Christmas be now? Is it Christmas because they’ve put up the tinsel in Tescos? Why are you muttering “Too bloody soon”, Daddy? It’s beginning to be Christmas now! I’ve seen the Christmas adverts on telly! I love Christmas! We’re doing a Christmas play this year in school! We all have to learn carols! I love carols! My favourite is ‘Away in a Manger’, because it’s really cute, and it makes my Mummy and Daddy say “Awwwwww!” whenever I sing it, except I’m told to put a sock in it if I sing it in July. I also like singing ‘Jingle Bells’, especially when Daddy lets me sing the proper words about Batman being smelly! I want a DS! Or maybe an Xbox! Or maybe a Playstation! I want things that explode, not those silly things that are supposed to be for girls. They’re all pink and boring. I want the new Captain America film on DVD. Or The new Ghostbusters. Nothing about hair or clothes or stupid makeup.

Girls: Shut up and accept it

 

I can’t bear to go into town at this time of year. Daylight hours are just crammed with last-minute shoppers. It’s literally Hell. It’s busy, and everyone’s shoving, and my feet hurt, and I don’t know whether I’ll have time to get everyone done, and Aunty Joan isn’t really with it, so we can miss her out, and I’ll have to do cards at the last minute as usual, and I’ll have to buy everything online except there’s another sodding postal strike, and they just know to do it in the last week before Christmas, and they’ll fuck around with everyone, and the bloody TRAFFIC in the roads, and never mind about going into the centre of town at this time of year during the day, what about the fucking night time??

Why are we going shopping? Just tell Santa what you want and he’ll buy it for you! Sparkly lights are very nice, but they’ve been up for aaaaaaages. And why are we shopping AGAIN when we went shopping just the other day? What does ‘last-minute-panic’ mean? Is it the last minute ever? I’m BOOORED of shopping. All we ever do before Christmas is go shopping and get cross.

There are gangs of Rudolph-jumpered, arseholed arseholes marching around singing crude versions of carols and leering at anything in a skirt; and then you’ve got these screeching harpies with tinsel in their deeley-boppers who are staggering around in sub-zero temperatures, and they’re showing as much flesh as a 70s porn-flick, VOMITING into the street , yelling at men, and the men are yelling at the women, and there’s all the swearing, and the aggressive demanding of FUN to be had, and everything costs more, and the pubs are far too full of part-time drinkers who cannot control themselves, and I have to go to the office Christmas party even though I’ll have nothing to say to anyone, and we’ll stand around in the corner of an expensive hotel conference room eating chicken goujons, and drinking too much, and then the disco will start, and I’ll behave like a smart arse and go up to the DJ and ask if he’s got any Captain Beefheart or The Velvet Underground; but by 11pm I’ll be fist-pumping to The Final Countdown, and dancing to Steps and Kylie, doing finger-guns to the Theme from Shaft, and bellowing along to Fairytale of New York with everyone else, and I’ll grab poor Becky in HR and tell her that the party is great, but next year I’ll put a band together for cost, and we’ll do some PROPER MUSIC to show the cunts in the office exactly what proper music is.

Daddy keeps saying he won’t go out again. Not after last year. And then he went out, and came home slightly loud, and that’s not fair, because I’m not allowed to sing silly songs. And now he’s feeling sick. And Mummy is not being nice to him at all. She says it’s all his fault and she has no sympathy. And then Mummy  goes out for Christmas Lunch with the office, and she comes back after my bedtime and makes groaning noises.

I don’t want to send out cards. They don’t send us cards, why should we send THEM cards? Oh, all right, I’ll send to them. And them. And them. And… right, I’d better make a list. Do we have a list from last year? And do you have their addresses??

Do I have to send them caaaards? I see them every day!

At this time of year, Robins are very territorial, and will fight to the death. No, it’s true, I really mean it. They literally murder each other. I am not shitting you. Vicious little bastards they are. And yet, so pretty on a Victorian postcard. I bet you don’t want a picture of a brutal but victorious Robin standing over the pecked-to-death body of a foe who unwisely hopped into the wrong territory on your mantlepiece, would you?

So… four cards. One from my mother. Bloody social media ruins a perfectly good tradition… it’s only polite… FOUR CARDS… are we really hated that much?

I got 25 cards from all of my friends!! I love my friends!!!

And I’m determined to go out somewhere carol singing. I fucking love carol singing! I miss singing all the Christmas carols like I did when I was young. All the dark carols with the spooky, Midwinter lyrics. I bet there’s a church in the misty countryside nearby that does a candlelit service in the run-up to the big day.

I’m all carolled-out. I’m bored of singing carols. I’ve been singing carols in school for weeks now. Why are we driving for miles through the fog to go to a church? We never go to church normally. Oh, it’s to sing BORING CAROLS.

 

Word of advice: Carols by candlelight… just be careful where you hold the candle if you have a long beard. Speaking from experience here…

And God, we have to go through the motions AGAIN. Why can’t we just do Christmas on our own without all those people? They’re nice and all, but thank God we only see them once a year, because the only thing we have in common with them is mitochondrial DNA, and Jeff will get drunk and start talking about immigrants, and I’ll get all left-wing and point out to him he’s a racist, and he’ll go purple with denying it, and then you’ll scowl at me for creating a bad atmosphere, even though Jeff is one of those wankers who voted for Brexit, which makes him a FUCKING NAZI in my book, and we all know who created a bad atmosphere in the 1940s. And I’m sick of Judy suddenly demanding at the last minute that she sees us on Christmas Eve. I fucking hate having to be her rent-a-family every Christmas. She could see us in February, or June, or October, but no – she is determined to be in that particular relationship, so all we are to her is a convenient family with a kid she can coo over when the mood takes her… can’t she go and bother his relatives instead this year? It’s so bloody selfish of her. It just means we have to tidy the house in an even more tidy way than at any other time of the year, and it’s all on top of all the other shit we’ve got to be doing, and yet the house MUST BE TIDY. I bet Charles Dickens never tidied his fucking house especially for Christmas, and he’s the most Christmas person ever.

We have to visit old people a lot that we only see at this time of year! And they say how much I’ve grown this year, except if they saw me more often they’d probably not say that. I’ve been looking at me in the mirror every day, and I don’t think I’ve grown. I like Uncle Jeff though. He makes funny jokes and funny voices and he’s friendly and does magic tricks and gives me nice presents. Daddy and Mummy keep telling me to be polite and not talk about my friends so much, or sing so much, or dance so much, or to keep interrupting, but I want to tell people stuff! I love Christmas! Daddy and Jeff keep talking about Europe, and The News, and Politics a lot, which is boring. I want Daddy to play with me, and Jeff to tell me more of his funny jokes and do magic tricks instead of talking about boring things on the News. And then Mummy will elbow Daddy in the ribs, and they’ll have a muttered conversation in the car on the way home about spoiling the atmosphere. And I like Judy. I wish I saw her more often. She buys me nice colouring books. She’s like a special Christmas person who isn’t Santa Claus. It would be weird to see her in the summer. Perhaps she doesn’t exist in the summer? I hate it before these people come around. Mummy goes mad about tidying. Why do people want things to be tidy? I don’t like tidying, and Mummy keeps making me tidy things. It’s completely wrong! And why does everything smell of sugar?

 

OK, for the last bloody time, YES, she has grown a lot this year. There’s nothing freakish about it, you don’t have to remark upon it. She’s a growing child. Look, I don’t want to spoil the season of goodwill, but do you perma-grinning fools ever listen to what comes out of your pious mouths? Especially when you’ve all admitted on Facebook you voted Brexit because of immigrants? Jesus, in approx 18 years time, you’ll be asking her if she’s got a boyfriend yet, and that her fucking clock is ticking.

And we have to see them. And they’re only in town for 48 hours, and let’s hope they could squeeze us in. But I’m not going up the pub to see the boys… yes, I’m going to give the 2016-old-gang-reboot a miss this year, because we know what will happen: We all have to commiserate with Carl about his divorce, and I’ll have to ask Steven how the business is going, and he’ll gloat, and when everyone asks what I’m up to, I’ll mumble about working in retail, and somehow end up resenting these guys – these great guys I went to school with, and drank with, and pulled girls with, and smoked pot with, and we’re all 40 now, and… and… and yet, they’re all successful and affluent and GROWN-UP, and I’m still  playing in bands, and they haven’t touched their guitars in years so we can’t exactly do a gig anymore. And they’ve got their lives, wives, kids and BMWs sorted, and I’m fumbling about with being a semi-stay@home Dad, and not having enough hours in work to call it a full-time role, working at the same level as Saturday teenagers and the just-graduateds, and being twenty years older than them. I don’t want to go up the pub and be beery-laddy and call each other by homophobic slurs like we used to in 1995, or be the only one who finds that sort of thing tiresome and offensive, and I’ll just meekly accept it and not challenge it as usual. Well, this year, I’m giving it a miss.

Daddy said he wasn’t going to the pub with the boys. What boys? If there are boys, I want to be with them. Are there girls as well? Mummy told me to shush. Daddy’s being quiet. Daddy went upstairs and found some old photos of all his friends when they were 16 and looked at them, but was a bit quiet about it. He’s not telling me who they are, or what they were doing. It looks like they went to lots of parties. Now he’s listening to an old tape of a band he was in with some of his friends. The singing is bad, and it all sounds a bit muffled. There’s a song called Spliffman the Sockbong. Daddy says the song is about a sort of superhero but won’t tell me what the superhero’s powers are. He looks at the photos and then looks sad. And then he announces he won’t go to the pub. Mummy said he should probably go to the pub, they’re only all there for one night. Daddy said no, I’m not going, and then he sulks a bit in front of the telly, and goes upstairs to strum on his guitar in a sad way. The following day, he says he wished he went up the pub.

And at some point I’ll hate Fairytale of New York, because it’s overrated bilge for people too snobby to accept that Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses, and All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey, are fucking brilliant Christmas tunes. And I’ll hate all the comedy specials. And I’ll hate the special Christmas Editions of… and because we’re at Mary’s house for Boxing Day, we’ll have to watch all the populist crap on the telly, and I just want to watch The Box of Delights on DVD again. in fact, Alice is old enough for The Box of Delights now! AWESOME.

The Box of Delights. Fuck yes.

And I love the sweeties and the treats and all the cartoons on TV. And I love all the songs, particularly the one sung by the tramp and his girlfriend. And all the programmes with all the famous people on them. And we all sit on the sofa at Mary’s house and watch all the funny sparkly programmes until past my bedtime. And Daddy is showing me a DVD called The Box of Delights, and it’s really old and everyone talks like the Queen in it. And Mummy is showing me a film of a book I’ve got called The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and everyone in it talks like The Queen again. And then The Actual Queen is on telly and she’s older than Granny. I just want to watch The Polar Express because I want to watch it all through the year, and Daddy says “in JULY??” unless it’s actually Christmas, in which case I watch it without him complaining.

And then we’ll cram everything into the space between 27th of December and 1st January, without getting any relaxation at all, and we have to see people, and do things, and be out all day, and not come back until late, and we’ll eat crap and takeaways, and feel bloated and hungover, and it won’t stop until we stagger back to work on the 2nd January, feeling like shit, hating our jobs, hating our colleagues. It’s as though the end of the world had been announced, we had all panicked and screamed, and in the streets we had fallen over ourselves to frantically copulate with the nearest person as our final act… and then the apocalypse was a false alarm, and we all had to put our clothes back on, and carry on with our lives. That is going back to work after Christmas, after the parties and the drinking and the shenanigans, with the final dregs of Christmas being packed away, and the world looking grey and shit and wet and tired and futile and miserable until April.

I don’t understand why we’re going into town AFTER Christmas to buy more things. I don’t really know all these people I’m seeing. Apparently they’re old friends. I’ve never met them before, or if I have, I was a baby last time. They keep making a fuss of me, which is nice. Sometimes they have children who are my age. When they go, Mummy and Daddy keep saying “Yes! We must!”. Must what? Must we?

You know what? Let’s just find a mansion house in the countryside, hire it for Christmas, light the fire, put up the tree, go along the snowy lane to the midnight service, sing the more Pagan-sounding carols, and then come back to the mansion, eat some mince pies, someone will light a fart, and we’ll declare it to be the most joyful time of the year…

I LOVE Christmas! I love presents! I love Nana and Granny, and all the family are here!

…and we’ll do without all this superficial Yuletide Frippery. It’s all too much fuss for just one day. One Day, One Christmas, we’ll do just that.

Superficial Yuletide Frippery

I want it to be Christmas all the time! I want it to snow! I want us to open presents all the time and eat the yummy food. I want to see all my family and all our friends, even the ones we never see the rest of the year! I want everyone to be happy and friendly and lovely and singy, and the telly to show all the films. Not James Bond though. James Bond is rubbish. Daddy says it’s not. But it is.

And then, on the morning of the 25th of December, when I’m tired and grumpy and fed up, and wearing uncomfortable clothes, and being on my best behaviour, and we’re all a bit frazzled, Alice will unwrap her present… and she’ll be so excited, she sings ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ by way of thanks… and I’ll get a lump in my throat… yeah, that’ll be near-enough for Christmas.

Sometimes, at Christmas, I’ll think about Baby Jesus in his crib. So I sing one of the carols I’ve been learning, and that usually shuts Daddy up.

 

The Neverending Story

So Sarah and I finished something recently. Something that has lasted for many years, and at times we thought it would never end, but it has come to a natural finish, and in many ways I feel a sense of relief.

We finally got to the end of listening to our entire CD collection in alphabetical order.

I’m a music-bore. We’ve discussed this already.

Not actually ours, but very similar

It was a project we started more than eleven years ago to bond our music together, and probably the most profound ‘getting-to-know-you’ exercise of all. At that time, I was still living in my home city and commuting 40 miles or so to see Sarah every weekend, and the intention was to eventually merge our CD collections. Since then, we have moved in together, done two housemoves, got married, had a child, and seen that child of ours  grow up and start primary school and begin to develop her own musical taste.

Of course, we didn’t listen to the CDs daily. Entire months went by when we didn’t take part in this project. We almost exclusively listened to the CDs in the car on long journeys whenever we could. Summer holidays were invariably a good time to get through a chunk of them. And as time went on, we added to our collection, and would listen to the additions as and when we got them, thereby covering all newcomers.

We established certain rules. All artists would be listened to, whether or not the other partner was a fan, which meant I had to listen to Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette without complaining about it, which was really really hard because I hate Jagged Little Pill. After listening to six Tori Amos albums in a row (I’m a fan, but six in a row? It gets a little bit… much), we decided to limit artists with multiple CDs in our collection to a representation of a maximum of 2 or 3 for the most essential artists. This meant that Sarah avoided rather neatly the prospect of listening to every single Steely Dan album, more’s the pity (oh, and just to pre-empt the inevitable snarky comments I seem to get about me being a Steely Dan fan: Go stuff your balls in caustic soda. The ‘Dan most definitely rule and their albums are the motherfucking bomb. The only thing about being a Steely Dan fan aged 18 in 1995 is that it doesn’t pull the girls).

Ladies, your attention please…

We’ve also learned a great deal about our musical tastes. Sarah hates, with a burning passion, 80s pop music, but not necessarily 80s Goth. I’ve learned that I cannot bear All About Eve. Ugh! Ghastly and twee. Sarah has discovered that Peter Gabriel leaves her completely cold. I like XTC, but find them distant, and prefer it when they pretend to do psychedelia (as in The Dukes of Stratosphear EPs). Sarah firmly believes ABC’s The Lexicon of Love is a terrible album. I believe that the worst album we own is The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter by The Incredible String Band. And Sarah is baffled that I have decided to keep The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter so that I can point to it and say that it is the worst album I own. Some albums we acknowledge to be utterly terrible, yet have a particular charm to it (Essential Funk vol. 2, which I bought in Camden in August 1995, contains music that is neither Essential, nor Funky – despite being determined attempt towards the Funk, and I suspect most of the artists are Scandinavian with song titles like Frozen Tundra Lady – and yet I have a particular affection for it). Curiously, we have not discussed which of our CDs is the best.

Some of the CDs we listened to as part of the project have been heard once and never listened to them since – it’s somewhat inevitable, as with books and DVDs, that you buy something, consume it once, and then leave it forlorn on a shelf. Some of them were better than we remembered them to be. Some of them were delightful surprises, some of them were disappointments. Some of them were old favourites that have fallen by the wayside over the years (much as I loved it as a teenager, and played it near-constantly in 1993, I don’t think I’ve listened to Automatic for the People by REM since working through the ‘R’ section more than five years ago). It’s rare that we’ve heard something that we both dislike utterly – almost every CD we own has something that makes it worth keeping, although I am much more likely to keep something than Sarah is. She is brutal.

Our musical taste largely consists of mainstream, mid-tempo, 4/4, non-dissonant rock and pop, although a lot of the albums are by moderately obscure artists. We have some rather obvious classics (What’s Going On, Pet Sounds, Dark Side of the Moon, Rumours) that every music-bore owns. We also have a fair amount of things that are relatively unknown, but deeply significant for personal reasons. A chunky proportion of the CDs are jazz, there’s quite a number of folk CDs – with a leaning towards female singers; quite a lot of funk, plenty of Rhythm and Blues (but not much 21st century R’n’B), a fair smattering of heavy metal, more country n’ western than either of us would have expected when we started this (albeit more alt-country than, say, Garth Brooks or Tammy Wynette), some pockets of absolutely batshit crazy “unlistenable” blasts of noise and truly experimental items of freaky weirdness (including that astonishing Chris Watson recording of the zebra carcass being eaten by vultures – which was always good to mention in order to freak out my much younger colleagues who said they liked “weird” stuff, when actually they just liked My Chemical Romance), odd bits of Prog, some classical (a large part of which are the Minimalists) but very little Opera, a reasonable amount of electronica but very little out-and-out dance/techno/rave/acid house, and practically no contemporary chart music of the last 15 years. There are lots and lots of compilations (mostly funk, soul, but also world music, doo-wop, blues, and folk), some of which are homemade mix CDs by various people, including ourselves.

And finally, something to be a bit proud of. We have quite a lot of recordings by local artists from our city’s thriving music scene, or CDs that we’ve bought directly from the artists at gigs. How very ‘Fair Trade’ of us.

One of my fave local acts, ‘Gufafwisp’

When we started, we probably had 700 or so CDs between us. This has now more than doubled. It’s tempting to now go back to the beginning and start all over again. This is unlikely to happen, for several reasons:
a) Cannot be arsed right now.
b) Sarah never wants to hear ABC again, and I would rather eat my balls than listen to Alanis Morissette without being allowed to bitch about it
c) It took 11-and-a-half years to get through the whole thing. With all the CDs we own, plus the potential additions we will make to our CD collection over the average year, it will probably take us 15+ years to do it again, which would take us well into our 50s
d) Alice is now beginning her own CD collection, and it’s shaping up quite nicely (Kate Bush, Bowie, etc) so the amount of CDs we’d have to get through would include hers, which, in about five-to-ten years’ time are probably going to be completely at odds with mine and Sarah’s tastes, they’ll explode in number, and are probably going to be in a format we haven’t considered yet, which renders the whole thing a bit pointless and anachronistic.

In reality, it is The Neverending Story (and no, I can’t resist putting a link to the most ridiculous song of the 80s. Sorry all, especially Sarah). There is never enough music. We will always be listening to our music collection, either in an order, or as a random exploration. It evolves, it shifts, it changes, it matures, like any relationship. Now, with our daughter, we will be seeing it in a new light.

As an exercise, I’d heartily recommend it. It has seen us through tens of thousands of miles of car journeys, caused much discussion and debate, and been a real journey through our psyches, our pasts and our future together. What the hell are we gonna do now?

I know I’ve said this before, but fuck no.

**NOTE on alphabeticisation for pedants, by a pedant**:
Alanis “Bumhead” Morissette belongs under M. All solo artists are ordered alphabetically by their last name. Bands go by their first letter (although ignoring ‘The’). Hence, The Beatles belong under B. The The would come under ‘T’ as they are The followed by The. Definitive article “The” followed by bandname “The”. It’s easy.

Things get complicated when you have an artist like Dr John. He’s not got a doctorate as far as I know, and his real name isn’t John. Therefore, I treat his name like a band name, and he’s filed under D, as is Dr Octagon and DJ Shadow. Then you have acts like Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Although he is arguably a solo act, the name is a pseudonym, and the album is credited a band called Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, so he goes under C. PJ Harvey (which is orginally the name of the power trio who made the first two albums) goes under P. Then there’s Scott Walker, which is another artist under a pseudonym, but by this point I can’t be bothered to argue, and it is monumentally pedantic (if I weren’t being already) to place him under E for Noel Scott Engel, and besides, Sarah would get incredibly annoyed at having to hunt for Scott Walker under ‘E’ all the time.

Soundtracks are sometimes filed under the artist name (as with Vangelis for Blade Runner) or under the film title (as in O Brother Where Art Thou?), depending on whim.

Oh, and if there are multiple CDs by the same artist, they’re filed in the chronological order of release, with best-ofs at the end. So Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits comes before Frank’s Wild Years, for reasons that are plainly obvious.

The Neglected Member of Your Family

There’s a member of your family you ignore. You talk about them, but you never acknowledge them to be an essential part of your family. When you do talk about them, it is either in a boastful, gloating way; or, more often, you talk about them in quite disparaging terms. You don’t take any photographs of them – or rather, they’re in your photos, but you don’t ever take photos specifically of this family member. You don’t ever tag them on Facebook. You don’t look after them enough. Sometimes you damage them physically and you don’t help them to heal themselves properly. You certainly never apologise for all the stress you cause. You don’t pay them attention. You neglect their care for months, sometimes years. You absolute bastard. How could you do this to a member of your family?? They’re someone you should care about! You should be put in prison for a long time, you unspeakable arsehole.

I’m not talking about a person, thank God. If I were, and you were guilty of all of those things, I’d be summoning a neighbourhood policeman right now. I’m talking about your house.

How could anyone neglect this?? It has a tower, for fuck’s sake! A TOWER!

The house is as much a part of the family as any of us. In many ways, our houses define our families. Being a parent means that I raise my kid, sure, and myself and Sarah share the burden. But also, being a responsible adult and parent  means looking after and caring for the house. Not just keeping it clean, but also making sure it stands upright after a storm.

Now let’s get something straight: I know how lucky I am to have a house of my own in this day and age. There are plenty of my contemporaries who do not have their own house, and the prospect of owning a house is almost laughable. House prices where we live are stunningly, unrealistically high, and they keep on growing. We are lucky.

We bought our house ten years ago, slightly on the pretext of it being a ‘doer-upper’ because it had a crap bathroom and some flaky damage to the kitchen ceiling. We did the bathroom just before Alice was born, and I Polyfilla’d the hole in the kitchen ceiling really badly. There’s still lots to do.

We learned that by owning a house, we were in charge of something vital and important. Not just because we’d spent a lot of money, but that looking after it would cost money. No longer could we ring up a letting agent and complain that the taps weren’t working, or that a slate had come off the roof, or that there was a leak, or that someone (cough) had blocked the toilet and the toilet needed unblocking. We had to deal with that shit (in some cases, literally) by ourselves from now on.

I also learned that there are some animalistic instincts that are still an inherent part of the human psyche, particularly in regards to territory. This happened just a few months into the ownership of our house. A friend and her partner was visiting, and Sarah was showing them around. I was out somewhere, probably causing mayhem. Sarah was talking about putting pictures up and the partner chimed in with “I’ll just put that up for you”, and promptly knocked up a picture hook and hung the picture. Very kind of him.

When I got home and was told of this chap’s kind DIY, I was actually furious. I fucking lost it. Properly angry. I felt defiled, cheated, invaded, that my rutting ground had been stomped all over; as though I was a porcupine, and another male porcupine had come into my territory and sprayed his urine all over my things. And I learned from this outburst that my home was MY territory, and that no male human should come in and do my hammering and screwing (unless I ring him up, ask him, and pay him to do so). And I’m realising that last sentence and parentheses makes me look like I’m a sexual freak with a cuckold fetish, which I’m totally not.

You do not do another man’s DIY. Even though he saved me the bother. Even though it was a kind offer. I very nearly took down the picture, ripped out the picture hook, filled in the holes, waited until it was dry, then hammered in the picture hooks again, and remounted the picture. Sarah told me I was being silly. Especially considering that, at the time, DIY was terrifying to me, and I’d just been done a kindness. But another man had done my manly work for me. And it rankled.

If that’s my wall, in my house, and you’re not me, and I’m not paying you, step the fuck away. Or I’ll put that pencil behind your ear at a 90-degree angle. In other words, I’LL STAB YOU IN THE HEAD WITH IT.

Due to this inadequacy, since then I’ve learned to DIY. My father never did any DIY around the house. He was perfectly capable, he just would rather pay someone to do it for him. For him, that was a post-war aspiration that he had succeeded in attaining – the ability to get someone in. The downside of this was that my brother and I were never exposed to much DIY in our youth, and as a result, neither of us could hammer a nail into a plank of wood when we became adults.

Owning a house, particularly in a post-financial crisis world where money is tight, means learning to look after it yourself. So I’ve learned to put shelves up. I’ve learned to install coathooks. I can do rudimentary plumbing. I can’t do electrics or gas, but I can paint walls all by myself like a Big Boy.

An ongoing issue that I could not solve was the outside of the house. There were cracks in the render, and there were damp patches forming in the two reception rooms. Some little toerag had sprayed his graffiti tag on the outside of the house. A garden wall needed rebuilding. The back fence needed replacing.

I replaced the back fence, much to my pride and delight. And also, we’ve spent much of the last 18 months having the rendering sorted out. You might think it’s an expensive way of removing graffiti, but I assure you, it’s worth EVERY PENNY. That, and it’s sorting out the damp in the front room.

This meant four days of moving the contents of the ground floor reception rooms up into my music room (which sounds like we live in an 18th century mansion, and I have a room for the harpsichord, neither of which is true unfortunately. I fucking love harpsichords!), which is where I write this blog from. My music room is actually the master bedroom of the house, but I have an incredible wife who allows me to keep all my music crap in the largest room we have.

My music room. Honest. *shifty eyes*

But now it is no longer the music room, but the living room, the library, the storage room, and the social heart of the house. I’m normally used to pootling up here on my own, making music, writing this blog, playing computer games (sometimes with my wife, behind me on the day bed, playing Minecraft), and very occasionally* glimpsing porn by accident**.

But now my sanctuary is invaded with impunity. Sarah and Alice are both in here. Sarah likes to ask me what I’m looking at on the computer, and Alice is watching a ghastly television programme called Rank the Prank, where, as far as I can tell, some obnoxious, over-privileged, shit-witted foetuses are beastly to innocent people for their own guffawing amusement.

We’re stuck up here for several weeks. We now know exactly*** how refugees live in tiny homes, with the barest of their lives accoutrements stacked around them.  OK, so we’re not fleeing from tyranny, and explosives, and rape, and murder, but I cannot reach my Fender Stratocaster without treading on several boxes of books and DVDs. The struggle is real.
*Hardly ever, only two or three times a day
**lol
***grow up, Phnut

Camping upstairs was fun at first. The novelty of being all together is still holding on, but we’re all ill now.  Alice has had a hacking smoker’s cough for four weeks, and no breath is complete without a grating cough spluttering from her throat. Sarah got the lurgy last week, and I bravely fought off any illnesses whilst lugging bookcases, TVs, boxes of DVDs, furniture and pictures, upstairs into the music room, only I then got properly ill with either AIDS or Ebola, and it hasn’t let up in weeks. Seriously. If I do not file a blog entry next week, then let this parenting blog read by less than four people be my legacy. Every breath I take is accompanied by a rattle of phlegm from my throat. Every move I make is painful and ache-sodden. I am probably dying, and my genius will clearly have to be recognised after my demise.

We hoped that the damp-proofing and rendering would only take three weeks. It has now been five weeks.

The thing is, with the external rendering off, I’ve now seen our house in the nude. Fully upskirt, no knickers on. And it’s terrifying.

Peephole plaster, the filthy minx.

During the first phase, last year, where the side rendering was removed, I was expecting all sorts of horrific things to be discovered – cracks in the brickwork, subsidence, rotting this, deteriorating that, and expensive catastrophes all round – and there was nothing of the sort. So, with this new phase – the rest of the rendering, plus the inside rooms – I was quietly confident. I was confident right up to the point where our excellent builder said the chilling phrase: “I think you should come and take a look at this…”

Rotting this. Deteriorating that. Plus the lively and entertaining moment where he pressed on a brick, and the entire wall flexed inwards.

“The rendering was basically holding the house up”, he said cheerfully.

So now it’s all being sorted. Expensive catastrophe narrowly avoided. We’re still in the music room. Alice is currently looking over my shoulder saying “What are you writing, Daddy? Is it your blog?”. I’ve just said yes. She’s now giggling at me writing this. I’m writing private blog stuff. Stop reading me writing this Alice, it’s not polite to read over someone’s shoulder. She’s giggling even more now. This is sort of a bit meta. She wants to know what “meta” means. She’s still giggling. Alice smells of bicycles. Go away Alice. She’s shouted “Hey! That’s not nice!” I say Go AWAY or I’ll write loads of swear words. Bum… poo… wee… crap… bloody… bugger… they’re going to get worse until you leave me alone… OK, she’s gone. I’m so glad she’s wary of bad language.

Look after your house. It’s your home. It’s the shell around your family. Much as it shafts my wallet to do so, I’m glad we’re spending £HOLYSHITSAUCE.99p on our house because it may be our shelter for many years to come. It may have to withstand a hurricane, or an ice storm, or rain so hard it’ll shatter glass. It may have to withstand the coming apocalypse, triggered by some loon in the White House #OOH_WOW_POLITICS #2016

It also has to keep us warm and cosy, as well as provide a place where I can listen to music loudly without someone threatening to call our landlord. We don’t have a landlord. Thank God we don’t have a fucking landlord. I’m not paying rent to some entitled dickwit to dawdle over calling in a tradesman. I can dawdle just as much, thank you.

I’m hoping we can move back downstairs in time for Christmas.

I hope.

What is it with people neglecting houses with marvellous towers?? I’d totally live in that house. Because it has a tower. I want a tower on my house. TOWERS! YEEEEAAAHHH!!!!