Santa's coming... to steal your biscuits

Yesterday everyone was reminding everyone else that there was exactly a month until Christmas. And even though you’d been told five times already in the last two hours, when your partner/ friend/ parent/ sibling/ co-worker/ neighbour/ annoying-person-who-thinks-they’re-you’re-friend-but-whom-you-really-can’t-stand said to you, “DID YOU KNOW... There’s exactly a month until Christmas!” I bet you went, “Ohhhhh yeah. God how time flies. And I haven’t bought ANYTHING yet.”

So you’re fed up of being reminded. I get it. And every time someone does remind you, you panic that there’s not enough time and that you can’t afford all the presents and food and needlessly sparkly outfit for the office party. But y’know what? I’m gonna be comforting here, and remind you of something else today: in exactly one month, Christmas will be over.

Yay.

I’m not a total scrooge, but let’s face it: a fat man slides down your chimney while you’re all sleeping just to come and pinch your biscuits, and we’re supposed to get excited? Because that will be the case this year, young boys and girls. The Con-Dem government has indirectly condemned Christmas by sucking money out of the economy in an attempt to, er... put money into the economy (yeah, I don’t get it either), and as a result Father Christmas can’t afford your ridiculously-priced Buzz Lightyear (which came out about 12 years ago anyway), your Barbie doll that looks exactly like the Barbie doll you got last year, and the bicycle it’s too cold to ride, and which you’ll be too big for by the time the weather improves. Father Christmas is not leaving presents this year; he is coming to steal your biscuits and maybe a couple of quid out of your parents’ swear jars, and before he leaves he’ll probably stick your hand in a glass of water so that you wet the bed and your Christmas is completely effed.

But in a month it’ll all be over. All that money, all that exhausting shopping, all those long journeys taking your children to go and see 19-year-old, uno-browed, bored Santa; all that present-wrapping, all that cooking, all those photocopies of your naked bum from the annual office party... All for one day. And in a month, it’ll all be over.

Wait. This was supposed to be a comforting blog post. Whoops.

Stop

I nearly got run over today.

 

Some idiot in a gas-guzzling 4x4 ran a red light. (I can say with some conviction that they are in fact an idiot because 1) They ran a red light, and 2) People who drive gas-guzzling 4x4s, unless they have something like a million kids, are idiots. No offence if you drive a 4x4... Much.) I was just about to put my foot out into the road when it came screaming past, out of nowhere. If I was a nicer person I might make my excuses for them and say that maybe the driver had a passenger with a stab wound, dying in the back seat, and that it was absolutely crucial that they run that red light and get to the hospital as soon as possible, because if they didn’t said passenger would surely die. But no. I highly doubt that was the case, for these four reasons:

 

1. They were driving a gas-guzzling 4x4, and as already mentioned, people in gas-guzzling 4x4s are idiots. Thus, I reckon, this red-light-running was just another example of their idiocy;
2. The hospital was in the other direction;
3. Running that red light may well have saved the life of the wounded passenger in the backseat, but would have instead inflicted another fatal casualty (i.e. me). I mean, there’s always the possibility that that is what they had hoped, because I know I can be quite annoying sometimes, but murder is a little extreme, and finally
4. Lots of people around here like to think Gran Turismo is cool. They also tend to think that walking down the road like an 80-year-old with arthritis and a broom shoved up their arse is cool. It is not.

 

Unfortunately there are no cameras on the lights around here, so Mr or Ms Vroom Vroom Vroom will yet see many more red lights... in a sort of blurry, blink-and-you-miss-it kinda way.

The Karmamaster

There’s something so quintessentially London about the Routemaster bus. Some people say tourists come to London to see the queen, but I reckon what they’re really coming for is the tea, the biscuits and the Routemaster.

Since the Routemaster bus was practically abolished in 2005, however, tourists have since had to make do with just the tea and biscuits, which is fine (I mean, we may not have the most well-renowned cuisine in England, but we do make some pretty tasty Bourbons), but not exactly something to (literally) write home about. But now, thanks to Boris Johnson’s frivolity with the capital’s money, that dear old death trap of a bus is soon to make its return. It’s had a bit of a facelift since we last saw it, but I’m sure we could all still pick it out of a line-up. What a bus would be getting arrested for, however, I do not know. Anyway, read all about it here.

I have fond memories of the Routemaster.

No wait, scratch that. I have one fond memory of the Routemaster. All other memories involve coming home from school on a jam-packed bus and falling over people’s legs, as I was too short to reach any of the handles that protruded from the bus’s ceiling. (Please offer these seats to those less able to stand my arse.) So sometimes I would stand on the lower platform, next to the conductor, which really you’re not supposed to do, but falling off a moving bus sounded more appealing to me at the time, than having my face squashed up in a sweaty fat man’s armpit.

So there I was, twelve-years-old, waiting on the lower platform for the red light to turn green and for the bus to reach the stop where I always got off. My daredevil personality didn’t really extend past waiting on an open platform, and I had no intention of ‘hopping off’ the bus when it could have moved away from the light at any moment. But the woman behind me had other ideas. Fed up with waiting, she shoved me (a short twelve-year-old girl in her school uniform – hello, rude much??) hard in the back in an attempt to get me off the bus so that she could shave half a minute off her journey. It didn’t work, though. I swooped to the side of the platform, holding on for dear life, and just as the bus accelerated away from what was now a green light, she put a foot out onto the ground.

I’m proud to say that I didn’t laugh as she fell into the road and rolled, several times, down the curb (though the thought did cross my mind). I just watched as the bus sped me and all the other passengers away from her, and the pedestrians who had stopped to help her stared back into my face disapprovingly as if I had somehow been at fault. Oh, but that wasn’t me; that was karma.

Introduction

I’m not gonna lie and go about declaring that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I mean, putting aside the fact that the dodgy semantics of that declaration would imply that I’ve wanted to be a writer since the dawn of time (which quite simply isn’t possible because, even if I had been born at the beginning of existence, for sure the dinosaurs would’ve gobbled me up pretty quickly), I can’t hide the fact that I had other dreams before I first picked up a pen. I wanted to be a Gladiator, y’know.

No, not a gladiator like the ones in Ancient Rome (dinosaurs and gladiators... you must be thinking I’m really old); I’m talking about that TV series presented by Ulrika-ka-ka-kaaaa Jonsson (I don’t know why I just did that). I used to have a poster of one of the female Gladiators on my bedroom wall; I think the poster was intended for frustrated teenage boys, but when I lay there gazing at it, I preferred to conjure up scenarios in my head whereby Gladiator-whose-name-I-don’t-remember and I would beat up lots of people up together. Bad people, that is. I saw myself as a bit of a 4-foot superhero with dimples.

So you see, I’m not really a cliché at all. I haven’t always wanted to be a writer. The writing thing just sort of happened because... Well, I’m not too sure why, really. It just happened. I suppose my inability to do a cartwheel and the fact that I love cookies too much to satisfy the demands of a Gladiator must have contributed slightly to the change of direction of my career.

So this is my blog. I wish I could give you some kind of indication as to what it might contain, but in truth I never was good at sticking to a plan (as evidenced by the above story). But I can promise that, if you read it, little WTF-shaped clouds will float through your brain occasionally. Be rest assured it’s a harmless side-effect.