Basement Jack - 30 November 2011

‘tis the season to be trollied

There's a great deal of negativity going into the festive period and in an uncharacteristic show of cheer Basement Jack reminds us all that despite the nightmare scenarios there's a lot to look forward to...particularly after a couple of glasses of yuletide rocket fuel.

It's amazing what drinking a modest quantity of warmed red wine with a faint whiff of cloves served in a small plastic cup can do for a person's outlook on the world. Yes, for many of us swamped by the tsunami of unrelenting bad news predictions that have characterised 2011 it has been a spirit-crushing siege of a year offering little in the way of comfort. But hey, it's Christmas now - it must be, I'm being served mulled wine! And though I may have imbibed more alcohol the last time I applied antiseptic to a grazed knee than was to be found in my festive beverage it was a starting-pistol for the annual spell of yuletide cheeriness.

Of course the journey toward jollity is more of a marathon than a sprint - a single sip of spiced wine isn't going to see me skipping down the street giddy as a schoolgirl...not this year at least. One cannot turn around the supertanker of dread-inducing negativity that 2011 has been on the head of a coin. It is going to take a while, for example, to see past the fact that Mr Cameron and his disintegrating front bench of jokers have been entirely untroubled by the anonymous Mr Ed and the Labour Party. This despite the buffet of attackable issues with which the Con-Dems have provided them, including:

- the economy is tanking;
- the educational system from primary schools through to universities is in turmoil and has led to civil unrest;
- the secretary of defence was forced to resign;
- the Prime Minister's former spin-doctor-in-chief has been implicated in the phone-hacking scandal;
- a cabinet office minister was caught dumping official documents in public rubbish bins;
- the Home Secretary is doing her best to commit vocational suicide and getting criticised by her own colleagues at the Tory conference.

Any one of these should have been enough for anyone with even the vaguest political smarts to bloody the Government's nose a bit, or even - heaven forefend - raise an actual debate. Instead Mr Miliband maintains the air of a slightly muddled science teacher, still not comfortable out of his laboratory coat and unsure of when it's okay to speak up. Has there ever been a political leader with less gravitas? Never has the term 'shadow cabinet' been more applicable - there's just nothing to them, they're not there.

Aaannnyway, this year-long torment is going to take a few more glasses of mulled wine and a few mince pies to overcome. Then maybe I'll be able to wish George Osborne, who shares the pallor and personality that the Almighty gave frozen poultry, a merry Christmas and a safe journey back to his home planet to plug into the hive mind. It might take quite a lot of mince pies.

For those of us involved in the retail industry Christmas itself is of course as much source of tension and worry as it is a joyous present-laden guzzle fest. So much rests on the festive trading period and there will be some anxious monitoring of till-rolls across the land. It doesn't really help that no-one can seem to agree on how Christmas is likely to pan out for the industry. Last month there were at least half a dozen separate predictions and not one of them agreed. Will it be a belt-tightened armageddon? Will it be about the same as last year? Will it be a Christmas of haves and have-nots? Will it be an online bonanza or will worries about deliveries send shoppers back to the high street? No-one seems to have a Scooby Doo. Uncertainty is corrosive, people tend to assume the worst which in the case of Christmas shopping could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if too many people think it's going to be a disaster and so don't spend their cash.

So let's dispel such doubts and concentrate on the splendid certainties of Christmas. Let us not forget that 'tis the season to consume your own body weight in chocolates or indeed the platters of festive party food of infinite variety and limitless quantity. Prawn rings, Thai chicken skewers, mini burgers, cheese and jalapeno bites, pigs in blankets, horses in armchairs...in danger of drowning in a sea of drool here. It's a month of guilt-free gluttony devoid of all tutting and eyebrow raising irrespective of the ridiculous eating excesses, it builds to one hunormous (huge multiplied by enormous) meal that leaves you practically immobile, a heap of overly-indulged contentment with gravy oozing through your pores (but in a good way). Mmmmmm, gravy. And we didn't even touch upon the ready-made excuse to get nicely lashed-up (drunk I mean, not whipped in some S&M dungeon). Let us think on Christmas as a time of belt bursting not tightening.

Another Christmas certainty is that all this wonderful excess, deep down hidden under the Quality Street wrappers is part of something a little more meaningful. For some this is religion while for others it is a conscious effort to show more generosity of spirit, to be nicer to each other or appreciate each other a bit more or just stop being such a pedantic numbnut for a while. We're better versions of ourselves and don't, for example, shout abuse at the television screen when major brands trot out advertising campaigns that would have looked dated in the mid 1980s (you know who you are). We suspend the temptation to scorn festive lyrics crudely shoe-horned into familiar children's songs by primary school teachers desperate to produce something vaguely harmonious at the Christmas concert. We politely wait for help in stores with spotty, ignorant, disinterested teenagers whose idea of customer service is chatting to each other and ignoring the customers...okay maybe we don't do that; that might be considered a Christmas miracle.

As for 2012? Well we could be force-fed another serving of stone-cold cack with a hideous side-order of humiliation if the Olympics fail to live up to Lord Coe's consistently smug assurances...but it might not. The lead-up to the Games could be the jump-start the country needs and the much sought-after recovery could finally reveal itself. That is certainly the view from the other side of a flask of mulled wine. Chin-chin.