So Here It Is

A combination of events meant that the only time I could do the Christmas food shopping was midday today, in between accompanying Olli to a hospital appointment in Leeds and going to an old friend's Christmas "do" this afternoon. Yesterday I was working in the office. The day before I was in London. Tomorrow morning I'm going with my mother to her hospital appointment, for her broken shoulder.

So there's been no time to go hunting turkeys. Usually I do the big food shop early in the morning on the 23rd - about six o'clock in the morning - but I thought that the roads were too icy to do that this year.

Still, today was a good reminder of why I usually make the effort to get up and go out early.

The supermarket was packed with people who had clearly failed their Supermarket Trolley Licence. In fact I think they'd failed their Pedestrian Licence. People cannoned into me all the time, either with their trolleys or with their bodies.

For the first time ever, I didn't manage to get a whole turkey: there weren't any. But I did get something called a Turkey Crown, which is a strangely deformed turkey that was clearly born with no wings and a lot of breast. It's supposed to feed nine people, and probably would if every one of them was my mother. "No, y0u've given me nearly two square inches of turkey and three peas and a whole sprout. That's far too much!"

But still, I think the five of us will struggle by with it for Christmas Dinner, and I've bought a big joint of beef too for when it runs out. A bit of a shame though, because I like all the funny bits of turkey that nobody else likes and I love turkey and am happy to eat it every meal until it's all gone.

The most annoying thing, actually, were some members of Leeds Diving Club rattling buckets all the time, hoping to collect change to help them to - - well, dive, I suppose. The constant rattling was so very annoying that I had to quash the urge to yell "I hope you all drown!" as I passed them.

This year I've noticed that the supermarkets haven't done their usual thing of playing jolly Christmas music all the time since September. In fact I haven't heard much of it at all, until today. And I don't think I've heard Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody at all, which is a shame because actually I've always rather liked it - it brings back fond memories of one of the better moments of my teenage years.

I'd made friends with some of the boys from Leeds Grammar School on a summer drama course, and they had invited me to Leeds Grammar School Christmas Dance. This was the golden ticket that many girls from the school I went to aspired to - - but I was too naive to know this.

So, just as Merry Christmas Everybody was playing, in came a small group of the Popular and Beautiful girls from my school with their eyes out on stalks looking for the gorgeous young hunks that were the Leeds Grammar School boys.

And what their eyes landed on was - - er - - me. In the middle of a group of boys. I was friends with them, there was no romance, but actually I was enjoying their friendship and didn't fancy any of them. However, the Popular and Beautiful girls were astonished that such rarefied creatures would even condescend to speak to Specky Four-Eyes School Swot Daphne.

I registered in their eyes the one thing that no amount of good school results would get from them - - and that was respect. They were still talking about it the next week. Girls kept coming up to me. "Were you really at the Leeds Grammar School Dance?"

I've always enjoyed that moment over again, every time I hear the song.

So here it is. Merry Christmas.