Ghosts of #Christmas Past

I was talking to someone on Twitter today about family Christmases, and realised how long it is since I've had one!  When my parents were alive I used to love going to their house for the day, with my sister and brother (and whoever we were currently married to/living with).  As Mum and Dad got older and moved to a smaller house, and my brother and I often had other commitments, they would just spend it with Julia, but for your entertainment I've dug out a few old photos from happy family Christmas Days of 25-30 years ago.

1989

We always had a liking for playing silly games with fun photos - I remember that year we decided to do a photographic depiction of the seven deadly sins.  This is Eddie (my brother) demonstrating 'wrath' on Julia... 

...whereas Mum insisted that 'pride' could mean pride in one's country.  I have no idea how she managed to randomly produce those flags!

1993 or 4

When you get a new cosy for the toaster, it's got to go on your head.  Even better when you get two.

1995

Continuing the things-on-head theme:  while we were waiting for lunch to arrive, Eddie insisted that we make party hats, and the nearest paper available was the Sunday Telegraph.

I am sure you would agree that they're inspired!  I particularly like the old style Spanish policeman and the French Foreign Legion (which I made, I am proud to say!).  The man with the longish blonde hair is my then-boyfriend Marcus; next to him is Eddie's then-wife Debbie, and the little boy is their son Christopher, who is sadly no longer with us.  

How lovely it would be to be able to have a family Christmas like this again ~ wherever you are, I hope you enjoy yours! 

This is why I shop online

A few years ago I wrote a post about the ghastly upselling that goes on every time you nip into a chemist to buy a pack of paracetomol these days (HERE).  But it's moved on, hasn't it?  Now, in a desperate attempt to claw back trade into the high street, shop assistants must now not only try to sell you more stuff at the counters, but pretend to be super-interested in everything you're buying, probably because the marketing departments have decided that what's missing from online shopping is the personal touch.

I've ventured from home and done a bit of high street shopping in the last month or so, mostly to buy clothes and presents.  In most shops, the assistant has packed up my purchase, saying, 'This is a lovely coat/scarf/shirt, isn't it?' Or extolled the softness of my jumper/socks.  Yes, that's all very nice, but if you're waiting in a long queue, you notice that they make a similar remark to everyone, whatever they're buying.  M&S are the worst for this.  One one occasion, I was buying a not inexpensive coat.  The chap who served me pretended he loved my coat (I was waiting for it... yes... yes... 30 seconds in, he didn't fail me: 'This is a lovely coat, isn't it?'), then pointed behind him at some advent thingy he thought I might be interested in.  I said, in a jocular fashion, 'Why, am I not spending enough money here already?'  He looked at me blankly.   I imagine his instructions were something like if it's a middle-aged woman and she's spending more than ***, try to flog her one of these bloody advent thingies we can't shift.

 I think I'd prefer this!

There are two women who work on the only till left at my local Asda who also inspect and comment on my food purchases, which I actually find rude and invasive - far too familiar.  Then there's 'Enjoy the rest of your day', once the transaction has ended (Sainsburys).  Yuk.  'Thank you' or 'Goodbye' will do nicely.  Each time, I want to stop and say, 'Do you actually care if I enjoy it or not?  If you don't, and I don't expect you to, why bother to say it?'  I don't, because it would be too rude and it's not the shop assistant's fault he has to trot out this trite rubbish; he probably hates having to do so.  It's the fault of the daft marketing people who are under the impression that it has a positive effect. 

Thank you, Julia - this sketch from Caroline Aherne is sadly all too real: 

There is another, more sinister trend going on now, too.  It's this: 
'Would you like to provide your email so I can send you confirmation of your receipt?'  
Er, no.  I'm, like, holding it.  I always shop in cash, but I know most people don't, and surely if you need further confirmation (other than the piece of paper they have just given you), it's on your bank statement? 
The first time I came across this one, in New Look, the four (yes, four; I am not exaggerating) people in front of me handed over their email without hesitation.  Like they thought they had to.  

 
And here's the worst one.  Last week, at the Clinique stand in Fenwicks, I bought an eye pencil.  After we'd established what colour and type I wanted, the assistant said, 'That's lovely, all I need now are a few details so we can build a profile of your colour and product preferences and make sure you get your discount vouchers'.    

All you need now?

Do you remember when you could walk into a shop, choose the item you wanted, and leave with no more interaction than, 'That'll be £17.99, please.  Thanks.  Bye.'?

This assistant wanted me to provide my name, address, age, email, phone number and skin type, all of which she was poised to enter on her screen.  I said, 'I don't want to give out all my personal information, I just want to buy an eye pencil.'  Her attitude then became decidedly less personable.  I resented the way she asked, though, apart from anything.  The way she attempted to make me feel as though I was to be treated like a Clinique VIP who would get special treatment, so that I might sell my soul to the great data compilation.

Seems like these days you can't buy from any shop, anywhere, without having more products pushed at you by an assistant who's been on a one day 'engaging the customer' course, and being offered loyalty cards, store cards, email alerts, etc.   

What with the assault of Christmas music in every shop, it is more likely to drive people to Amazon than draw them back to the high street.  Sales and marketing people, think on.

Make It Stop

I've just come back from doing the weekly shop.  Look, I know everyone moans about Christmas stuff in the shops as soon as August Bank Holiday is over, etc etc etc, but can I just have a mini-moan about the bloody music in supermarkets, too?

This morning in Morrissons, on November 23rd, it was Christmas CD time.  When I went in it was only that comparatively inoffensive one by Greg Lake, from the little known and very short CD, 'Christmas Songs That Won't Make You Pray For A Power Cut', or I might have walked straight out again and done my shopping via Waitrose Online, but I just struck lucky.  By the time my trolley was half full, it was Wham!'s Last Christmas.

I know why they do it.  It's all about subliminal messaging, is it not?  If you are made to feel that the season is already upon us, you will think

• Oh no, I haven't bought all my stuff yet; must buy, buy, buy
• Oh good, it's all Christmassy and lovely; must buy, buy, buy

But there are many among us who just think make it stop.  I know I am not the only one.  Like the awful upselling, I wonder how counter-productive it is, especially as more and more people, it seems, are starting to see the whole season as nothing but a celebration of the retail trade, and are downsizing Christmas more and more each year.

And why isn't Kate Bush's lovely December Will Be Magic Again on any of the Christmas CDs?  Perhaps it's on the same one as Greg Lake's song.  The one that no-one ever plays.

A heartfelt plea....

....to all friends and relatives who buy us boxes of chocolates for Christmas.

*feeble whimper* Please don't!

You can buy us boxes of posh biscuits, because I am not really a biscuit person ~ n.b., this excludes M&S All Butter Viennese Selection, which are not so much biscuits as little pieces of heaven in a mouthful ~ you know when you see that phrase 'all butter' that you're in trouble, don't you? 

There are still SOME LEFT in the biscuit tin.  I swear that having to resist them is sending my blood pressure over the top, and I've got one of those 'well woman' (stupid name) health checks next week, at which some kindly nurse practitioner lady will inform me that I need to lose weight, my BP is teetering, I shouldn't still be smoking and I really need to think about coming off these pain killers.  I will then say "I'm sure ten fags a week can't do much harm, if I come off the painkillers I won't be able to walk, and anyway, I've got better skin for my age than you, so there".   (Reminds me of the time 20 years ago when a doctor told my boyfriend that he was overweight, and he said "well, you've got a big nose".)

Actually, I'm going to refuse to be weighed.  They can't make me.  Surely they can just look at me and make an educated guess?  Which brings me back to the point of this post - THE CHOCOLATES.

This year we received a big two layer box of M&S Belgian chocolates, a family sized tub (why aren't they tins anymore?) of Heroes, and two enormous boxes of Thorntons.  The 'Fairground Favourites' are the best.  OMG, as they say.  There's this one in a yellow and green wrapper, it's an apple cream, oh my goodness....

On Christmas Day I told myself "you can eat as many of them as you like, today, but only today".  Of course, this instruction soon slithered gluttonously downwards into you can eat as many as you can.  I had a tummy ache when I went to bed, and I had merely scratched the surface.  A couple of days later a friend emailed me to say that she was stuffing all the Christmas cake so that it would be gone and she wouldn't have to eat it anymore, or words to that effect.  I so understand this.  This morning, instead of the muesli I would normally eat, I ate all the remaining fudges and caramels (the only ones I can't resist) out of the Heroes, so they'd be GONE.  So I won't have to think about or try to resist them ANYMORE.  They probably contained as many calories as the muesli, and I'll be hungry again by ten o'clock.

But the Thorntons problem remains.... I've tried putting little dishes of them on my husband's bedside shelf so that he will eat them all, but, being a man, he just has one or two per evening.  Last year, I found some Christmas chocolates left in his place-into-which-I-cannot-go, in September.  

So this is my heartfelt plea: I'm honestly not being ungrateful, but please, please, next year, if you must give us chocolates, put a gift tag on them saying that they are just for my husband (he is very possessive of his belongings; I will not mention his star sign), or, better still, give us some of these....

...so that I can go to one of these (and I am so bloody old this year that I can almost remember when it was like this!)

...and buy the bubble bath that is absent from all toiletries gift sets these days ~ as moaned about HERE!

In the meantime, I shall just have to rely on willpower.  
That will work, won't it?  Don't all jeer at once....  I WILL drop a dress size by spring, I will, I will.....

Happy New Year!

 

How many did you get this year? Come on, you know what I mean...

.... I'm talking about THESE things!

I've been getting at least three a year since they first appeared in gift toiletries sets in around 1995, and until last year I just left them on the side of the bath until I got fed up with seeing them around April, and chucked them out.  Or pushed them into the bit in the airing cupboard between the linen baskets and the wall and hoped they'd go away.

But they multiply. 

If you have an impromptu clear out of the bathroom at any time of the year, I guarantee you will find up to five of them.  They lurk.

This year I received two, a rather meagre white one in a Baylis and Harding set, and an abundant, lush pink one that's currently still sitting on the coffee table with a self-satisfied, well fed look about him, next to his Soap and Glory friends.  Probably been at the Thorntons.  The ones I haven't eaten, anyway.  Boy, did I have heartburn when I tried to go to sleep last night.  

(update: when taking more bottles of 'body wash' out of their gift packs to put away, just now, I discovered a third one hiding away between the bottles!)

Last year I finally discovered what they're for, by putting one in the bath, adding soap and applying it to my skin.  They're to make your skin go all red, and then fairly smooth.  Kinda like body lotion does, except body lotion misses out the red bit and smells nicer.  I'll stick with the body lotion, I think.  And make a plea to the people who make bath sets to please, please, put bubble bath back into them! 

Bring back the bubble bath!!!

Yesterday, I got shower gel, (result!  I don't have to buy any for either of us until at least November; it actually didn't run out until about three weeks ago, this year!), the oddly named 'body wash' (it's, like, shower gel), body lotion, and moisturisers with practically every name you can think of - hand cream, foot cream, knee and elbow cream (okay, I made that up), and a very thick one like Pond's Cold Cream which has a name too stupid to repeat.  Not as ludicrous as last year's 'body polish', though.  But no bubble bath.  Perhaps they think we're too busy buffing our skin with the strange objects, polishing ourselves all over and applying different creams to each part of the body, to lie back in bubbles.  

I hope you had lots of nice presents!!  I decided yesterday that I would eat what I wanted, with the result that I ate as many chocolates as I could (not as many as I wanted, but as many as I could - there's a difference); today I will instruct Him Indoors to hide them.  He doesn't actually need to - I can't stand the sight of them today.  

Have a good Boxing Day, whatever you are doing!

So what did you get for Christmas, then?

As per my earlier post about the difficulty of buying Christmas presents (HERE) I finally managed to think of things to get for my family and in-laws ~ my father was very pleased with his cashmere scarf, even though I went to about six shops that only sold them in blue, red, garish stripes or ... grey.  Sorry, Daddy, I did try to find one in Dad-ish green or brown but, alas, the store buyers decided that no-one should like those colours this year!

My favourite present was a fab rock chick bracelet from my sister: 

For the discerning Aerosmith lover!  Here's the website if you'd like to have a look for yourself: Twin Rocker Gems.

I also loved my black leather gloves from one of my sisters in law, and my bathroom now smells of strawberries, courtesy of some Body Shop stuff from the other one!  In fact, the strawberries are vying for pole smell position with the L'heure Bleue I got from my father ...

... at least, he said "What do you want for Christmas?" and I said "I'm running low on perfume", so he said, "how much is it, I'll put the money in your bank account,"  and then I ordered it from Amazon, so it's more or less from him, anyway!

Talking of things that smell nice, my husband now has enough shower gel, stuff that you spray on all over, after shave and post shave balm, etc, to last him until about 2017.  He's still using some of the stuff he got last Christmas.  Still, at least it saves buying anything of that type, like, ever again.  I've got shower gel and body lotion and curious preparations called 'body butter' and 'body polish' (???), too, yet no bubble bath.  Don't any of these gift packs include nice bubbles to lie in, anymore?  Do the makers think we're all too busy to lie in the bath?  I've also got lots of those netty type scrunched up things that come with every bath product gift set.  What are you supposed to do with them?  I always leave them hanging about in the bathroom for a few months until they inch themselves into that place in the airing cupboard from which nothing ever reappears.  

Oh, and whatever happened to bath cubes?  Remember them?  Blocks of solid stuff smelling of lavender that never properly dissolved, so you'd find little lumps of them in the bath when you pulled the plug out.  (One of Dad's socks filled with tangerines, nuts and bath cubes.  Nostalge, nostalge).

I won't mention all the chocolates.  The Thorntons, the Lindt, the Heroes...  I'm trying to pretend they're not there (not very successfully, it has to be said). 

I wonder if anyone can beat this present for novelty?  My sister's chap, who is called John Morgan, got a wonderful present (or set of them) from his brother.  John Morgan being a very usual sort of name, his brother, Richard, took it upon himself to find every book and CD he could find by other John Morgans.  Here is John with some of his presents - I like 'The Killer's Manual'!

 Best of all, his brother discovered a 1970s type gents' outfitter, and obtained a Harris Tweed jacket, 'made especially for John Morgan'.  I love this, what a brilliant idea!!

Anyway, I hope you all had a wonderful time with your loved ones.  Now, I must go and take a bath.  I shall be having approximately four per day from now until April, in an effort to get through all that shower gel.  That's if I can fight my way past the boxes of chocolates.....

Christmas Desperation....

"Are you ready for Christmas?" 

My father and I place bets on how early we will be asked that question, each year.  I expect my first one will happen in the hairdressers on Friday. I will pretend I haven't heard it.  (I'm not, by the way).

Well, then - are you?  No, I don't really want to know.  Every year we hear that the seasonal retail figures for 'the high street' are disappointing - especially in recent years, now that more and more people are shopping online.  The shops are getting desperate - and it shows.

Where I live, the shopping centre is open air.  Yesterday I walked through it, on only November 26th, to the tune of Wizzard's "I wish it could be Christmas every day".  I couldn't get away from it.  Look, I didn't want to hear that banal, tired song in 1973 when it came out, and I certainly haven't wanted to hear it for every one of the 40 years since. How, pray, do the shops think this will entice me in?  The same goes for the clothes stores with horrible reindeer sweaters in the window, and every single emporium trying to orientate its wares towards present giving; even Wilkinsons (where you go for your cheapo kitchen cleaner and shampoo) claimed to have the perfect Christmas gifts for all the family ("a handy kitchen gadget for Mum, and don't forget that garden tool for Dad!"). A girl in a red fleece wearing reindeer antlers stood at the door trying to spray me with perfume as I walked past.  I only wanted a notepad and a pack of biros.  

As for the supermarkets who start pushing overpriced chocolates and packets of red candles at you as soon as you start taking-a-cardigan-with-you-because-those-late-summer-evenings-can-get-a-bit-nippy ~ don't get me started, especially not now that people moaning about it begins as early as Christmas product promotion every year, and I'm as guilty of this as everyone else.  I find the whole thing so desperate and so ghastly that this year, guess what?  I'm not going to go out shopping again until January.  I'm going to be one of those who shops online, instead.  

I think it was buying bleach and loo paper to the sound of Elton John's appalling "Step Into Christmas" that sent me over the edge...