Gift Receipt

The thank you letters have been written, and are on the desk in front of me (I was shamed into writing them because a four-year-old in the family has already distributed his). Locally, the snow and the stubborn ice have gone. Both have been replaced with rain and mist - fine precipitation that takes a few seconds to see, though it’s falling constantly. Deliveries have started to return to the residential streets here. Normal service again. For days now the shops will have been teeming with ingrates demanding cash or alternatives for presents they don’t like.

You can’t quite work out whether you’re bored of Christmas decorations or not, or if they look tired/stale or just as fresh. You could perhaps do without Hellmann’s Mayonnaise ads suggesting different ways of smothering mayo over leftover turkey. Then again, they haven’t brought the same psychosomatic nausea as when Rennies used to sponsor Christmas TV. Every advert break was bookended by sponsorship idents featuring a close up of a bulging, rumbling belly, with a hand caressing the pain and a packet of Rennies thrown onto the table.

Should all the presents be put away, and incorporated into your other belongings? I’ve started watching the Christmas 2010 pile of DVD presents, undeterred by a combined running time that competes with my life expectancy. Meanwhile our cultural producers are trying to sum up the year while there’s still some of it left. They either list the major events of the year, or the best that their programming/area had to offer in 2010. Me, I’d like to offer interesting things I have learned, through December:

• The Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads Christmas special proves that, in 1974, people were already well versed in complaining about Christmas repeats, particularly of The Great Escape.
• Waterstones staff read the Guardian from choice, and are terrible (perhaps wonderful) iconoclasts when it comes to big name/big selling books in their field of expertise.
• DHL deliveries can arrive in silver BMW saloons.
• Having an industrial dehumidifier and industrial fan in your house is loud, but quite fun to stand in front of while wearing a Doctor Who scarf.
• If I’m reading anything on the BBC’s News Magazine pages, instead of their other news pages, I should close my browser, irritated that articles from both share the same RSS feed. Otherwise I will have to read a crass conceit or idea, bollocks generalization, out of date new trend, awful witticism or any of the other things they fill those features with. Though I’m sure they are quite deliberately written that way, presumably for tired (human) browsers who just want a vegetative break in their end of day net-staring-at sessions.
• In some candles the wick extends further down than others, and when you try to melt the base of such a candle you end up lighting it - burning the candle at both ends.
• When you burn the candle at both ends you can neither put it down nor blow either end out without making a mess, or a Madame Tussauds remark.
• When it’s snowing, steam engines on preserved railway lines can outperform electric trains for timetable adherence, or even just offering a service.
• It is possible to see both Jeff Lynne and Liam Gallagher look-alikes (Gallagher was also a dress-alike) in the same day.
• They won’t sing together.