Blood on Santa's Claw

'So this is Christmas', the song says. 'And what have you done?'

Not much.

I went down the Green Man once or twice. One time, Santa was there, or the Rotary Club's incarnation of him. His sleigh was blocking entry to the road so JP, driving, had to take a slight detour. As he parked, Santa was walking towards the car. 'He's going to knock on the window!', said JP. For a moment, the situation seemed to recall some disturbing childhood dream or memory. But Santa did not knock on the window. He ignored us completely, walking off into the night looking dazed, even traumatised. Which was hardly less disturbing.

Ironically, I had just been positing JP (who works for a courier company) as a kind of anti-Santa, preventing 'little Johnny' from getting his tricycle (or pornographic computer game) because it's buried somewhere in 'Santa's Grotto' (their warehouse). Once, he told a complaining customer: 'Madam, what happened to the days when little Johnny was satisfied with an orange in his stocking?' 'Madam' was shocked. Perhaps because, these days, that scenario has a distinctly sleazy ring to it.

Music has been strange this Christmas, what with Rage Against The Machine at number one. I don't approve. Not because I love Joe McElderberry or whatever he's called, but because Killing In The Name seems a dumb choice to go up against it, not least because it's making a ton of additional money for Sony (rage against the machine indeed!). Almost anything would have been better: Agadoo; a five second field recording of an ant farting. Imagine how this last would play out on the local radio chart countdown: 'And now, here it is at last, the moment you've all been waiting for, the Christmas number one!' Pffft. Ah yes, comedy gold.

Even some of the stuff they've been playing on Radio 2 has sounded weird. Did I imagine a song called I'll Be Home For Christmas With Bells On? As sung by Dolly Parton? What kind of an image is that supposed to conjure up? Even a seemingly innocuous line like 'Mama put the turkey on' developed bizarre implications here. Like something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

There was one honour that I felt should have been bestowed upon Killing In The Name and that was to accompany the first dance at the wedding of Matandamanda. What better way to start a marriage than to have the happy couple screaming at each other over the dancefloor: 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!'? Instead of RATM, however, they had Michael Buble. His version of Killing In The Name isn't quite the same.

It was the only disappointment of the day, which took place in Fawlty Towers, with Roy Cropper officiating (as I recall). Mat did seem to get the giggles at one point, possibly - but this is mere conjecture on my part - at the thought of saying 'my awful wedded wife' instead of 'my lawful wedded wife' (that old classic), but aside from that it all went well. Although immediately after the ceremony the toastmaster did announce that 'romantic' photographs were being set up outside with 'Amanda and Paul'. Well that didn't last, I thought to myself; but it turned out that the toastmaster had confused Mat with the photographer.

The guest book seemed to circulate rather early, so I just wrote that the pate was nice. Charlotte, at our table, was asked by the waitress if she was 'vegetarian all the way through'. Or was it just skin deep?

One of our candles, burning much faster than its companions, deposited wax in Dave's wine glass.

After the speeches (one of which mentioned me - but I'm not going to return the favour) we were banished to 'the anti-room', a terrifying place in which you lost all sense of direction and turned to drink. When we were allowed back into the real room, a band appeared. They made us dance.

The next day at breakfast Mat was full of new-found husbandly wisdom. 'Never put banana on a shoe', he intoned, inspired by Heidi doing just that. Though specific to a certain set of circumstances the statement sounded like the first of Mat's Rules of Life. We eagerly await the next.

Then it was Christmas Day. My Christmas presents were well-chosen, by and large - because I'd bought them myself, and given them to other people to wrap. Who else but me would have had the forethought to buy me that Fassbinder box set? Or those CD's by Lisa Germano, who is described on the front cover of one as an 'acclaimed, powerful and naked singer-songwriter'.

Well, you got to have a gimmick, don't you, these days?

As for New Year, Dave and I went to Ross and Christine's. Inspired by the nibbles on offer, and Pirates of the Caribbean II on TV, I spoke to Ross (a former archaeologist) about the ancient mystical symbol of the 'Prawn Ring' and its origins in the mythology of Iceland. We didn't entirely tease out all the implications of this (save that Jason Donovan is certainly involved) but we seemed to have here the makings of another sure-fire best-seller in the Dan Brown mould. It's something to focus on in the New Year.*

When we walked home there was a light covering of snow on things. I wrote 'Happy New Year' on cars. Dave, on the other hand, drew a cock (I wrote an apology next to it.) We continued to drink at home and I was raving about the film that was showing on BBC2, They Live By Night, and saying how wonderful Jacques Tourneur's direction was - even though the film was directed by Nicholas Ray. So I must have been drunk.

Next day, it hurt when I moved, or thought too strenuously about anything. Nevertheless I did get out of bed now and again. I raised the blinds and, after a decent interval had elapsed, lowered them again. It looked like a nice day.





*Further developments. It transpires that on Christmas Eve, Mat's Mum and Dad were awaiting a delivery of fish. Somehow, all the discussion about whether 'the Christmas fish' would arrive has been garbled - already - into a legend. And so it is written that the Christmas Fish (a kind of catfish, I think) visits every house at Christmas with gifts of - I dunno, crabsticks or something, which he leaves in shrimping nets left hanging over the fireplace. It sounds ridiculous I know - who would believe such a thing? Luckily, Sam is young enough to believe anything he's told. And this is how legends are born.

As to how it intersects with the Prawn Ring, who the hell knows? But I have a feeling that I'm going to find out. Or forget about all this entirely. One of the two.

Sinful

The great thing about listening to Resonance FM is you never know what you are going to wake up to. It might be Boris Karloff reading Aesop's Fables. It might be a song called 'Tube Station Lies' in which (for example) Chalk Farm is berated by a whining Cockney vocal for not being a farm. Or this:

Diarrhoea, diarrhoea
Fire from within!
Bowel movement, bowel movement
Constipation is a sin.

Yes! A song about diarrhoea. You don't get that with Terry Wogan. The band were live in the studio, but I never discovered who they were. Some things it is better not to know.

I went out with ex-workmates. We had the usual pub conversation about how we should do something creative which will become inexplicably successful and make it so that we never need to work again. Paul revealed that, at the age of seven, he wrote a story called 'The Jesus Worm', which was basically retells the story of Jesus with all the characters replaced by worms. Jesus had to be 'crucified' on a stick. Even at the age of seven, Paul had an eye for detail.

Well, that's it right there. 'The Jesus Worm' has the makings of a fine Dan Brown-style thriller - maybe not so much the content but the title, definitely. The Jesus Worm sounds like just the kind of thing a paedophile priest (or paedophile Knight Templar) would say ('Would you like to touch my Jesus worm? Look, he's risen again!') so we can add a 'misery memoir' element to the stew as well.

It's a sure-fire hit.

Obitchuary

Blanche died. Coronation Street will never be the same again without her dry waspishness (or do I mean waspish dryness?). Although it was the actress who died, not the character. The character is another matter. I seem to remember that when the guy who played Stan Ogden died suddenly back in the 80's, they kept the character alive, ill in bed upstairs. If I'm not misremembering, you could hear him banging on the ceiling like a poltergeist. It was creepy.

So quick and clean seems best for Blanche. Quick, anyway. We were discussing the issue at work and Lorraine said she could be hit by a bus. And then, I elaborated, her body could be flung through the window of the Kabin, into the arms of Norris. Imagine his face! Then the bus could run Rosie over, or something.

Some might think that this scenario is disrespectful to the actress. But they wouldn't use the actual corpse. And anyway, it's what she would have wanted.