Surprise!

The following post contains words, ideas and thoughts which most people may not agree with. If you feel interested enough to want to read this and are able to figure out how this post has been disguised via the miracles of the internet (namely, basic HTML coding) then please feel free to read on. If not, I can pretty much sum things up for you - if you either don't want to read this or are not very internet-savvy - by saying that the main point of this post comes down to the following: As people get older, the "magic" of Christmas gradually fades over time. I appear to have experienced this transition from excited child to world-weary adult in general over the last few years and have decided to use the Christmas period as a framing device for this observation.

I would like to stress that the following is not borne out of upset, greed or ungratefulness. As with anything, however, I will be frank and honest with every letter of this piece.

Christmas brings out the worst in people. It's supposed to be a time of giving and sharing and spending time with those you normally wouldn't. As humans, though, we are all egotists and we only really care about ourselves. The idea of receiving gifts as donated by others of those around us out of sheer good will and a generous dose of commercialisation makes us revert to our core, instinctive, Neanderthal ways. Basically, for many people, "Christmas" equals "I want stuff".

There's a quaint charm about the day itself. for many it follows a formula, or a tradition. Some families visit relatives whilst others have relatives visit them. Some families sit around the fire or, if you don't like in the countryside or the 1800s, the television and watch as the citizens of EastEnders, Emmerdale and Coronation Street suffer massive cast culls by way of "freak gas explosion" or "unfortunate lorry disaster". Some families drink copious amounts of alcohol and destroy the nifty gadgets they unwrapped mere hours ago through either clumsiness or shoddy craftsmanship. It's not all happy and wholesome, though. Some families are driven apart by work and location differences, most notably those carrying out military operations. Some people spend the time entirely alone and, in some cases, with absolutely nowhere to go.

What keeps Christmas so fresh, however, is the surprise of the gifts. Gifts are wrapped in all kinds of coloured paper, tied up with ribbons and bows and adorned with miniature greetings cards. Gifts appear in all manner of shapes and sizes, from the simple small boxes to the fucking frustrating to wrap giant fluffy teddy bears. Applying the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics to this whole bundle of nothing, the exact nature of the present is unknown to the receiver up until the very moment that the colourful veil is lifted, scrunched up and tossed into the bin bag in the middle of the room. Surprise! Now you know what's in that box! And best of all it's not a dead cat, unless you know some pretty fucked up people or you're actually into that sort of thing.

I personally have started to lose the magical unique feeling of Christmas only to have it replaced by laziness and mild indifference. I've reached a certain point in my life - one which I'm finding it extremely difficult to break away from - wherein the family and family friends surrounding me at this loving time have no idea who I am. Part of this stems from the fact that I don't really know who I am, I don't vocalise myself very much towards many people and very rarely speak of myself. Also, for this reason I have no idea what to gift to those around me so there's definitely a bit of tit-for-tat present swapping going on there.

The aforementioned notion of surprise is completely lost on me at this time and has been for some time now. This has come about when all of the gifts - and let me once again stress my gratitude for them as gifts are given by others at their own expense - that I receive are quite literally, without exaggeration or sardonic mocking, either items of clothing or deodorant gift sets. I've started to develop a certain paranoia that all my relatives only regard me as either naked or smelly or both. I've come to accept this over time, yet am made to feel something of an outcast and fairly insecure about myself when others - whether family or friends, loved ones or acquaintances - recite endless lists of received gadgets, games, box sets, booze, surprises and expectations as well as just the regular clothes and smellies and that. When I deliver my albeit shorter and less dazzling list, people end up surprised, which quite frankly is one luxury I don't feel I get any more.

Now that my fingers feel dirty for typing such anti-Christmassy Christmas musings, I feel obliged to point out that this year, my parents have decided to collaborate on the cost of a holiday for them and us kids at a later date; the exact details of this vacation are yet to be decided. This is a good thing and once again I would like express my gratitude. I wouldn't like to be known as a pissy little twat who takes to the internet to publicly complain about everything and everyone in their lives on the spur of the moment; I'll leave that to the kids on Twitter.

I would like to make it clear that what you have just read has not been written as a rant made out of shit wit, sarcasticness and cynicism. It is essentially an open letter to everyone and no-one borne out of bored honesty, stoicism, an aching head and a glass of port. Furthermore, this is has been written to get everything out before it devours me completely, purely for my own benefit. After all, it's that special time of year when we think about ourselves. I echo my prelude to this piece by saying - or rather typing - that all of the gifts I have received, however few, have been received with gratitude, and that I have simply written all of the above with brutal honesty.

Finally, I'd like to close by saying that I hope whoever may be reading this has enjoyed the Christmas period in whatever way they've experienced it. Enjoy the rest of the festive period because in 364 days time, it'll be "same old, same old" once again. Surprise!

Mystery

When the train gets held at the station, people naturally start to complain; no exceptions. Not even if a diabetic passenger collapses moments after boarding because he probably didn't eat breakfast that particular morning or something. In fact, anyone in the adjoining carriage will, by human law, poke their head out into the aisle and stare through the little sliver of window in the door between compartments to see the backs of a crowd blocking off the impromptu patient of Chester railway station's emergency medical team. The complaining people, all the while, speak in tones reminiscent of why you left the area to go to University in the first place.

Whilst at University, you spend far too long stressing about coursework; both your own and that of fellow students. The fellow students' workload is dumped upon you not by your own choice, however. Once a healthy and stable workmate/friend/peer/colleague relationship has been established, that virtually acts as an unspoken 'open-door policy' for your comrade to inflict their stress on others. Luckily, this phenomenon only every occurs for two days before an assignment deadline in intense concentration. Once it's over, everyone reverts back to their happy selves leaving them able to partake in social or, in some cases, anti-social events usually involving alcohol and mild embarrassment.

Around the "term ending" times - i.e. Christmas and Easter - the former working groups and subsequent social groups end up saying goodbyes and farewells to one another as they dread a whole three weeks away from each other's company. If you're lucky, in the run up to the Christmas break, one of your peers may happen upon ownership of a Drinking Roulette-based game which essentially consists of a cheap moulded plastic roulette wheel, ball-bearing and several numbered shot glasses. Sometimes these glasses become filled with cola or water, or even undiluted squash for the particularly daring. Other times, fruity ciders fill the thimble-sized receptacles, and sometimes your peers explore the reduced-and-unspecified shelves of the alcohol aisle in the Crewe branch of Tesco, which happens to exist on stilts above it's ground-level car park. This results in the acquisition of a £7 bottle of what can only be referred to as the "mystery drink", which looks like Jägermeister, pours like soy sauce and tastes like Italian pesto and industrial paint thinner.

Once goodbyes have been exchanged alongside sordid secrets - all of which remain inside the room in which they were once spake - there eventually comes a time where you return to a former dwelling and a former existence you tried so desperately to get away from a little over two years ago. However, aforementioned victims of (possibly) long standing medical conditions do their bit to impede your progress - or regress as it were - whilst the surrounding passengers remind you of the fact that such people actually do exist.

As a result, you end up sitting on a static vehicle covered in layers of clothing, surrounded by two small suitcases on wheels, suffering an aching shoulder from a bulging satchel and realising that Patrick Wolf's The Bachelor album is actually pretty decent and that it does not, in fact, finish after track three. All the while, you find that it's a little difficult trying to admire the quaint, bizarre confluence of what can only really be described as "electro-folk" when you're staring at deserted buildings and faded rubbish that lies amongst train tracks that have clearly been out of use for years.

Eventually, you should make it to your destination, albeit forty-five minutes later than you would've previously hoped and proceed to realise how little your life seems to amount to as well as how much you wish the diabetic bloke from the train a speedy recovery as you gulp down tea laced with a stupid amount of sugar.

The Main Distraction

A long, long time ago - so about a month - I had a weekly venting window on this very portion of webspace. The good thing is that it still exists. The bad thing, though, is that I've either gained more of a life or lost my enthusiasm for typing (or both) that it's constantly been slipping under my attention radar for me to give a crap. For this reason, more stuff has happened during my existing time that could potentially warrant noteworthiness right here, meaning that this particular blabble could either stretch to an obscene length or amount to a couple of paragraphs which simply state "stuff happened" and I can talk about my distaste for typing or something. Either way, I should really be doing assignment work right now so this is my obligatory distraction from doing that. and not just any distraction, no. This is the main distraction. The main attraction of distractions everywhere. Yes, I've already pointlessly chopped an onion, had a shower and stared at a static Facebook page for an hour and a half without actually doing anything on it. Now, come gather round, ye children, for a grand story of festive magnitude and other wintery delights (probably... I don't even know what I'm typing now [God, I hate this]) as I present my annual un-Christmassy Christmas tale. And in time-honoured tradition of the culture of Western media, I'm presenting it many, many weeks before the actual day of Christmas.

So I went home on a train at some point, which is always the best way to start a story of festive cheer. My journey was made easier by the technology in the palm of my hand - a mobile telephone I had aquired during the summer period, with snazzy features such as flipping graphics, internet access and a calendar which doesn't get used.
My mild Facebook addiction is now regularly satisfied whilst I'm on the go,
which pleases me so,
but the network which provides my access is oft slow
at fulfilling my demands, and I get all like "whoa".
I signed up to a certain mobile network which, for pseudo-legal reasons, I will not mention, but I will tell you that it rhymes with... oh shit, nothing actually rhymes with Orange. Anyway, over the latest months, the firm has been overtaken and rebranded by the somewhat phonetically screeching EE, meaning Everything Everywhere. However, in the light of my various train journeys which lacked suitable access, I feel that they should be obliged to rebrand to Everything Everywhere, Except Certain Sections Of Railway Lines Which Happen To Pass By Fields, Hills And Other Various Countryside Related Miscellanea, but somehow I feel that EEECSORLWHTPBFHAOVCRM doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Over the recent weeks, I've revelled in the initial bursts of joy of that annual office-party tradition of Secret Santa and cringed with horror at the actuality of that annual office-party tradition of Secret Santa. Currently, I belong to two Secret gifting groups: one consisting of coursemates, the other of University Archery enthusiasts. In each of these groups, however, it has quickly occurred to me - i.e. from the moment I've been given the name of a person I barely know within each group - that I don't want to do either any more. On top of this, one of the groups has suffered the mishap of a late withdrawal leaving several people in a stupour or some other word like that and as it currently stands, I have no idea what, if anything, I'm supposed to be buying for whom, if anyone. Picking out a name at random is all chance, of course. But when it comes to the names I personally end up resting upon, God or whoever or those head-fucky laws of chaos decide to pop up and be a complete dick. To those of you who happen to have your unknown gifts provided by me as a result of the naming goblins of Secret Santa, I hope I'm not ruining the surprise by informing you that you'll probably end up with a box of Quality Streets or something. Failing that, a white chocolate Magnum and hug.

And so once again, as November falls over into the four o'clock darkness and December turns our collective breaths into fog, my still somewhat-pubescent hormones have decided to latch onto one or two members of the fairer sex. Call it tradition. Girls are, like, my Coke advert. I don't particularly care about anyone or anything in any way other than platonic, but alas, for the third year in a row, my mindspace has wandered into the realm of "liking someone", rendering it completely useless when attempting to work towards important assignments. Apparently, it's a lot more important for me to shove my hands in my pockets, bunch my shoulders forward, smile sheepishly with my head down and twist one foot on the ground whilst anchored to one point by the toes. If personal history is anything to go by, this beautiful, wonderous, cutesy, disgusting, lovable, stupid bastard feeling will subside within a week or three, allowing me just enough time to not care that I'm spending the New Year period alone, again. For the time being though, to you who happens to have been affected by the perfectly normal, yet annoyingly human feelings conjured up by my brain, I hope not to frighten you away with the sheer sight of my face and to make things up to you at some point with a white chocolate Magnum and a hug. If those have already been taken, I'll consider the box of Quality Streets, but quite frankly my dear, I feel that might be taking things a little too fast.

These paragraphs are stupidly long. If you read them all, well done, but at the same time you might want to consider doing something with your life. Might I suggest a white chocolate Magnum and that you go... hug yourself.