One week to go until Christmas Eve and I can honestly say that I have not dreaded Christmas this much since I was married. Looking back through my old blogs I note how much I used to love this time of year and bemoan the fact that Christmas is gradually being eroded from our way of life. If you go through the blog archive you will find ways of saving Christmas, and saving me from writing it again, but I fear that the erosion of Christmas as a celebration has already won me over. I would love to get my spirit of the season back and look forward to December but I can’t see how this is possible, unless I get visited by three ghosts one night.

The offices at work are decorated and people keep talking about Christmas this and Christmas that, and although I point out that I couldn’t care less if it was Christmas or Pancake Day I am trying my hardest to not come across as the ‘miserable one’. I have tried to avoid town as much as I can too because of the time of year, and I haven’t even gone to a gig for a while apart from the other Sunday which oddly enough was to launch a Christmas album; at least by staying away from live music I am doing my bit to let the other ‘champions’ of Nottingham music catch up with me.

Sitting in my decorated house (Mandi is still very much a fan of Christmas), I haven’t even made a dent in the collection of Christmas films, apart from A Christmas Carol of course, yet this evening for some reason (perhaps the lack of Eastenders on a Wednesday) I found myself watching a Val Doonican Christmas special. Although by today’s standards this is very bland television, (I’m sure BBC4 were being ironic) this was the sort of thing that millions of people used to tune into. Nostalgia always mentions the viewing figures but always forgets to point out that there were only three channels, so there might have been people who couldn’t be bothered getting up to walk across the room to change channel (yes youngsters, no remote control). I still find it hard to imagine that something like this was popular but I’m from a different era. Having said that, there’s no doubting Val Doonican’s ability as an entertainer and this was by no means the worst thing that the BBC allowed to happen on their premises during the 1970s.

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