Mandi and I have a Christmas Eve tradition, the pound shop fiver dash, which we have carried out for a few years now. It started out as a joke but we do end up buying each other some useful items, which we put in a Christmas stocking each and open in bed on Christmas morning. This was the first thing we did this morning, my highlight being a version of A Christmas Carol as a poem. It was a kid’s book really but a nice addition to my collection. I didn’t twig when I opened a stylus for a smart phone screen, I just assumed that she had run out of ideas and panic-bought it to make her five items. It turned out when we opened our proper presents that Mandi had bought me a smart phone that I have no idea how to use, but then again Christmas Day isn’t really the time to work out technical things that require instructions. As part of my pound shop dash stocking for Mandi I bought her a bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup, she always complains that there isn’t any when we have a meal that requires sauce and it seems to be the sort of thing we always forget when we are food shopping.

I would have taken Jack out beforehand but Mandi insisted that we open our presents first, so I insisted on a cup of tea first to try and wake up. After the presents I took Jack to the park for a run around followed by a walk to the garage for cigarettes (how very festive). Apart from a group of kids enjoying a pre-lunch game of football down a side street I didn’t see anyone out of the house, don’t children get given bikes or pedal cars that they can’t wait to try out anymore? Time was you couldn’t walk two steps outdoors on Christmas Day without almost being run over by a new wheeled toy, are they all playing on computer games nowadays? What a sad world we live in.

Although we did have a lovely day with my dad and nana round for Christmas lunch, it didn’t feel like Christmas Day to me. When I was a child you could feel it in the air that it was Christmas Day, it was a magical feeling that filled you with joy. Before the family arrived I listened to a bit of Junior Choice on Radio 2 and had a shower while wondering if I could ever feel the way I used to do about this day, this day that we all used to look forward to with such excitement.

In between dinner and pudding (we always leave a sizeable gap, sometimes up to an hour) I took Jack for a walk with my dad and I made another visit to the garage to buy washing up liquid. The shop keeper, for whom Christmas isn’t part of his culture, wished me a cheerful ‘Merry Christmas’, which is a sight more than any of the big name shops in town offered during the run up to Christmas. There’s a lesson here somewhere, but I’m fucked if I can work it out.

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