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2 hours ago
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Monday
Yeah, I’m gonna say it – stop with the fetishisation of sandwiches, already! Obviously we’ve had the annual rejoicing over the advent (Ha! See what I did there?) of the Pret Christmas offering and the paler imitations thereafter by lesser chains and retail outlets. Now Harrods is getting in on the act with a £29 version on sale at its steakhouse, the Grill on Fifth. It consists of a burger patty (and listen, let’s get rid of the word ‘patty’ while we’re about it, shall we? Why? Because it’s viscerally hateful, that’s why), roast turkey breast, stuffing, a pig in a blanket, spiced red cabbage, cranberry sauce and turkey gravy.
Stop it. Stop it now. Stop with fancy sandwiches because – stop with pretending sandwiches are proper food. Cold food is not proper food. Cold food you can eat in one hand while you walk home or back to the office from the place you bought it is definitely not food. It’s what you eat until and unless you can hie yourself to a hot meal and be happy again. And, as for paying £29 for the privilege – well, unless somewhere under the cranberry sauce and turkey gravy is a cheque for £35 or a nice plate of risotto, you people are fools to yourselves.
Tuesday
Not unconnectedly, I realise now, this family is rejoicing in the advent of a new oven. We have been without one for several months because the previous one broke. Out of warranty, obviously, but well before I reckoned it should have and therefore well before I would allow us to buy a new one. So it’s been stovetop stuff only – no sandwiches, of course, though I will permit toast for breakfast and smashed avocado with poached egg etc additions at lunchtime – until I felt its dues would have been paid. Look, I don’t make the rules – my brain does.
Anyway, it’s here now and in good time, with roast chicken, gammon, boulangère potatoes and assorted other delights served up from the glorious hot box in the corner of the kitchen. We are like ancient man discovering fire again. At the height of my culinary giddiness I offered to host Christmas dinner. My family, extended family and assorted friends politely declined as one. The roast chicken, gammon, potatoes and assorted other delights were no good, you see. My cooking is never good. The triumph lies in the fact that the things were cooked – not teeming with bacteria, and not sandwiches. But apparently people are looking for something more on Christmas Day. Ingrates.
Wednesday
The RSPCA has released research showing that reindeer get stressed at Christmas. When I first read the headline I did think that it meant Santa’s reindeer. Which seemed, you know, fair enough. They’ve got a big, extraordinarily time-pressured job to do and I can’t think anyone envies them.
But it turns out that it meant the reindeer that are forced to attend festive markets and so on as mascots and commercial draws. Which, to be honest, seemed even less demanding of official research or proof. You mean to say that a creature built – depending on species – to roam in herds across the Siberian tundra, the snowy vastness of the Yukon, the mountainous regions of Norway do not find it conducive to health and happiness to be shackled next to orange pine cabins dispensing overpriced hot cider and assorted tat while people berk like the berks they are all round them? Colour me astonished.
And yet, because they are shackled in precisely this way, for the delectation of berks, we clearly need exactly this research and proof. Sorry, Rudolfs all. We’ll try to do better next year.
Thursday
More uplifting news comes from the small, semi-local to me, town of Sheringham where a protest has been taking place over the last few weeks over a bus shelter. Short version: town has a nice thing. Council wants to demolish nice thing and replace with worse thing. People of the town object. Council objects to them objecting. It’s a tale as old as – well, councils.
Slightly longer version: the bus shelter in question is a 1950s brick building decorated inside with murals depicting the nearby heritage railway, and when people in the nearby pub heard that a demolition team was about to arrive they decamped there and began a sit-in. Eviction notices and bailiffs failed to remove them and today the town council withdrew their support for the proposed redevelopment and voted to preserve the shelter.
A nice thing stays, for at least a little longer.
Friday
My Christmas shopping – apart from the stuff for people I don’t like very much – is done. Time to turn my attention towards the sales. This is a very important part of Christmas. This is where you buy all the things that your desperate hunt online and through the shops for others’ gifts has revealed that you desperately want and need but only at a soon-to-be-reduced price.
I’m hoping to get for post-Christmas: a pillow that stops me waking up in the morning like a broken marionette; a second heated throw so that I never know a moment’s more discomfort in my life; the perfect jacket, currently available at an imperfect price-point; 800 books. The last won’t be on sale, but I will use all the money I’ve saved on the jacket, throw and pillow to buy them, and happy new year to me.
