Christmas is cold

[millionreasons]

Christmas Week 21^st – 28^th December 2006

Thursday
Christmas is cancelled this year

“You’re going to Skegness?” asks the ticket inspector incredulously. “In this weather? Very bracing.”

Greater London disappears behind fog and the Home Counties evaporate. It’s hard to see when night is falling on this, the shortest day of the year.

At Kings Cross, the train platform was announced as Queue Behind B – the line melted as soon as the actual platform was announced, but the idiocy made everyone anxious and fractious and get on the first available carriage and shove their trolley suitcases all the way down to their seat and into the calves of those who were able to understand the optimum point at which to board to get to their seat. One of these days, I’m going to write one of those list books which always sell well at Xmas entitled: Other People Aren’t Worth It.

We reach Grantham, a place I’ve never wanted to visit, to wait 20 minutes in an unheated waiting room for the connection to Skeggy. A woman from an Alan Bennett play talks to “Janice” on the payphone about whether to have chips or jacket potato for tea.

Onto a train as twice as cold as the wating room and journey to Sleaford, only to sit in the train station for 10 minutes, possibly as a punishment for a former life misdeed. Some students talk about how Justin Lee Collins is “just amazing”. Why are students going to Skegness? Irony, perhaps.

And so this is Sleaford
It doesn’t look like fun

Quite cold and dreary

And very hum-drum

 

We arrive into Skeg into a wall of freezing fog – I almost get back on the train and go home. The two minute dash across the car park to Dave’s dad’s heated car is like a two day walk across the Arctic. But we pass the houses lit up like, um, Christmas (they have built four new windturbines to deal with demand) and an inflatable Santa, snowman and nativity scene, and it’s warm in the house and we have pizza and watch terrible films (Serendipity, Bruce Almighty) and gorge on Quality St and find out that out of everyone who travelled today, only lucky us got to our destination.

 

Friday
It wasn’t like Christmas at all

 

Out into Lincs, past a partridge in a cold field and windmills whipping cream through the ice sky, to see the seals at Sommercotes, which is now as traditional at Christmas as mince pies, although Dave’s parents want to move to Spain so it might be our last time.

 

 

This is the fifth visit and I imagine that the baby seals we saw in 2002 might be the mummies now. After a downward dip of 3 less cubs born last year, the 2006 total has hit over a thousand; 400 more than on our first visit. It’s still so good to see wild animals outside of a controlled sanctuary-style environment and a rare co-operation between military and wildlife. We go talk to the Seal Man, the bearded Lincolnian who is as much a part of the Seal Experience as the lickle babies themselves. It’s still exciting to see them, but during our first visit we were excited by some seals a hundred yards from the fence, now we expect them to be up close, balancing balls on their cold little noses.

 

 

Drive onto Cleethorpes where I spend some time looking for Ye Olde Chippie which existed during my last visit in 1988, but doesn’t anymore. Dave patronises another establishment and I look in estate agents’ windows and discover that we could buy a two up two down for under £80K and I start to find reasons for moving here – some nice cafés, two delicatessens, not one, not two, but three Thai restaurants, a minigolf course, indoor swimming pool, a plethora of pubs selling beer for £1.55, and a Wilkos. Retirement sorted.

 

Then to Louth, a market town in the style of Thirsk, Ilkley etc. We take afternoon tea in a Victorian Tearoom (est. 1995) where the waitresses are wearing not only ridiculously frilly ‘period’ aprons, but also tinselly reindeer deely-boppers. We leave to straddle the meridian and then bump into the Seal Man outside Wilkos; it’s very odd to see someone out of context.

 

 

Saturday
Oh oh, I believe in peace 

To Boston, where the Stump bells are playing carols slightly out of time (and tune). Once inside, I realise that church going must have fallen at about the same time as the rise of central heating: it’s freeeeeeezing. The nativity scene seems to have forgotten, or mislaid, an important character; Mary and Joe are peering into the straw for Jesus. Dave’s parents start talking to the vicar (or whatever) who tells us that Boston has the third highest number of registered methadone users in the UK, the worst obesity and the largest infant mortality rate. But I’m sure Doncaster is working hard on catching up. He goes on lament leaving London, the fact that he has to work so hard at Xmas and tells us about parishioner on parishioner violence in a local estate church, before saying how much it costs to heat a Medieval building and that they don’t get funding from government. Strangely, I’ve never considered the CofE to be a cash-strapped organisation and we don’t put anything in the strategically place collection box as we leave. Maybe the lack of Jesus in the crib is due to cuts.

 

 

We make a short trip to Asda, possibly my least favourite thing to do on the last Saturday before Christmas, then wander round the shops, eating a cheese and onion pasty in lieu of lunch at a decent café and then leave Boston for ever. It’s not as good as Cleethorpes.

 

On the way back, we listen to Doncaster Rovers vs Nottingham Forest on the radio. Donny are playing their last game at Belle Vue before moving onto a new ground. Since Arsenal got Emirates sponsorship, they too have got airline cash and their new place is the Easyjet Stadium.

 

Realise that there is a local byelaw in all provincial towns that states that all hairdressers must have puns in their name:

• Millionhairs
• Hair Razors
• A Cut Above
• The Long and Short of It

And all barbers must be called Sweeney Todd’s.

 

Later, we venture out to the Sutton on Sea Social Club. Maybe it’s a good job that Dave’s parents are moving to Spain as I’m kind of running out of Phoenix Nights references and possibly irony, especially when the couple next to us refer to Mudhusuden Panesar as “that Pakistani chap”, before saying that they used to have a cat called Nigger and then proudly displaying their golliwog keyring. Having a golliwog is not akin to joining the BNP, but to belligerently show it off like they’re rebelling is tiresome.

 

I’m so bored of babyboomers who, from their land of free milk and subsidised honey, don’t want anyone else to have what they had, be it pensions, university places, cars or welfare payments. I’m tired of people reading a soundbite from the tabloids and turning it into an (un)truism. Those that take a rumour and, by repeating it a few times, make it into a “fact”. People too old to remember facts who then exaggerate to make a story. People who think that because they stuck two fingers up at the establishment in the sixties that if they do so now they can’t be right wing. People who want a cheaper life in Spain but don’t like the idea of Lithuanians and Latvians wanting to use another European country for a better life - they see themselves as economic saviours but the East Europeans as spongers, rather than people keeping the economy afloat by doing jobs the baby boomers don’t want to do and don’t want their children and grandchildren to do. Those who have reached middle age and don’t understand that the world doesn’t belong to them anymore, that they are the oldies, not the centre of things, which leads to feelings of injustice that in the past they may have directed towards the establishment and the rich, but is now directed at people who make them feel that they don’t belong. Not understanding that everyone feels embittered at some point or other, that sometimes feelings of unfairness are just emotions and not necessarily a reality.

 

I consider outraging the whole place by telling them that the crown mark on pint pots will soon be replaced with an EU symbol, but demur. 
 

Anyway, the band come on and play a selection of soft pop and power rock hits from the 70s and 80s and we go home and watch the Strictly Come Dancing final results.

 

Sunday

The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful

 

Dave’s parents kindly drive us, with the aid of their Tomtom, to Tickhill, where we partake of lunch and then slob out for several hours on the sofa. I have caught a cold, probably from standing around in the damp and chilly Boston Stump. I always knew religion would make me ill. We make our way down to the village to try and visit a pub; two are full but the one on the way to Worksop is half-empty and we meet schoolfriend Helena and her boyfriend fiancé for beer and gossip and roast millet recipes. Wake up at 3 a.m. to hear Santa Claus barfing sherry and mulled wine down the toilet, or possibly David vomming up a penicillin and beer mixture.

 

Monday

 

Menu de Noël de la Maison

Entrée

Rosé Cava and mini-pretzels

Main Course

Butternut Squash and Cranberry Slices
Roast Potatoes
Brussels Sprouts
Carrots
Swede
Stuffing
Apple Sauce
Cranberry and Orange Gravy 

Riesling
 
Desert

Lemon Tart

Trifle

Christmas Pudding and Custard

 

Muscadelle

 

Chocolates, coffee and Mount Gay Rum

 

Musique

 

Abba

Mozart

 

Earlier, we took a pre-prandial stroll around the green and grey South Yorks muddy countryside, overlooked by pit and church, and backed by the motorway always twinkling and hr-mmmmming whilst my dad gave us a local history lesson, postulating that the Normans moved the Saxon village half a mile eastwards to its present position. Later, my mum tells me that I had a Great Uncle Fish who was, surprisingly, a fishmonger and that I am descended from the rich Farrers of Bradford, although our strain of the family was illegitimate – my Great Great Great Granddad gave my Great Great Great Grandmother a pub after she bore his child out of wedlock. No need for income support in those days.

 

We watch Dr Who (entertaining enough, but the arachno-femme villain was culled directly from Buffy, and Catherine Tate is a comedienne, not an actress), Coronation St (no drama-deaths here, but just a slow build of the horror (and sometimes wonder and love) of family life) and The Vicar of Dibley. This latter is quite the worst thing on television and its only funny joke (a reading group analysing Winnie The Pooh – and The Tao of Pooh shows that people do do such things) is signposted as heavily as the M1. Later, I find out that it was the highest rating programme of Xmas day with 11 million people watching. Even given that 10m of those were probably unwilling viewers, I think I may have to conclude that I’m in a minority when it comes to believing that Richard Curtis should be punishable by death.

 

At the end of the day I notice I have two grey hairs sprouting. It’s the beginning of the end. A rant about immigrants will arrive shortly.

 

Tuesday

You won’t fool children of the (industrial) revolution

 

Out for the day to York, past the Warmsworth roundabout, where a large netting and floral display reads Welcome to Doncaster (underneath, a smaller sign made of pansies and primulas states: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here). Past the majestic cooling towers smoking dreamily at Ferrybridge which have moved from one side of the A1 to the other.

 

Round York: down the river, the Shambles, Cliffords Tower, the Minster and an outdoor ice rink. Eat lunch in a toll booth tower which is now a tasty Belgian croque and crèpe caff called La Place Verte. As we wander round the shut shops, we notice how many of them sell Kwak, Leffe et al – York must be twinned with Antwerp.

 

 

Wednesday

 

To Worksop, home of the Dukeries and headquarters of Wilkos. South Yorks, North Notts and West Lincs all have the shops that time forgot elsewhere – Kwiksave, Happy Shopper, Wimpy.

 

We catch the local train from the winner of the Small Station Award 1990 to Nottingham and get a bus to Grandparents#1 for lunch and presents, then walk through Hyson Green and Radford to Lenton where we’re staying with Rob and then drive out to Donnington to pick up Rich. Considering we chose to train-travel rather than car-hire, we have spent an awful long time in voitures. We pass the Ratcliff-on-Soar power station, its towers looming above us like slow moving B-movie monsters, and drive down the rivalling road of Xmas lights where there is a 7ft inflatable Mickey Mouse dressed as Santa (these must be the people who retire to Sutton on Sea).

 

Back to Nottm to have sloe gin and Timothy Taylor beer in the excellent Peacock pub, which got with the vintage programme by keeping all the fixtures from its former incarnation as an old man’s pub and adding fairylights and a chandelier. One of the original old geezers stands at the bar and bores the barman with tales from the past. I look at a flyer for a production of Aladdin starring Claire Sweeney, Christopher Biggins and Basil Brush. The crabstick man comes in. The House of Love and the La’s are on the CD player. It’s quite quiet in Nottingham after Christmas.

Thursday
But if you'll really hold me tight, all the way home I'll be warm

….something we find out as we try to find an eating place the next day after faffing about on buses to visit Grandma#2, having finally dropped off, eaten, recycled, or lost our Christmas presents. We meet Charl and Did in the Broadway and have a nice lunch and put the world to rights and lefts before getting the train through the sunny countryside.

Arrive once again at Grantham (Overall Station Award Winner of 1998). The train to London is 20 minutes late, but at least we’re not sitting with the same McDonalds munching screaming family all the way back down south. We wile away half an hour over mediocre cappuccinos before finally travelling back down to the smoke where, on entering Kings Cross station, I click my muddy sodden boots together and repeat: There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.

Comments

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Great post. Favourite bits: the cold little noses, the hairdressers (true in Ireland also) but especially the babyboomers rant. I want to print it out and show it to my dad (hates Eastern Europeans) and mum (terrified of Muslims and Nigerians).

[millionreasons.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the sitch is in Ireland, but it always seem to be the people who don't see a black face or hear an Eastern European accent from one week to the next who are scared. I dunno, I think the Daily Mail should have a health warning on it.