Tonight we had Santa come flying past on his sled. It was actually a converted trailer dragged by some model of cheap Ford and decorated with fairy lights. Sitting on it was a rather pissed-off looking Santa with a white Afro and clearly somewhere better to go.
Our local businessmen pull this stunt every year to raise money for charity and I usually hide behind the curtains until they're gone. They hit every street during December, belting out a range of crap Christmas classics and never travelling faster than 5mph. My personal hatred of Slade hasn't been tested too much this year and this time we hit lucky and the local businessmen gave us the John Lennon classic: 'Happy Xmas' aka 'Do They Know It's Christmas' aka 'And So This Is Christmas'. I have a soft spot for the song. Lennon was my favourite Beatle and I don't particularly hate about 75% of the song or the way he sings it. Yoko Ono, however, is another matter. When they were about five or six streets away I could still hear her caterwaul like somebody rubbing a half-strangled cat down a chalkboard.
The way I cope is to think of it as John Lennon's greatest hoax perpetuated upon the Christmas celebrating nations. Why else would our festive season echo to the out-of-tune warbling of a woman who actually believes in New Age mystical nonsense? It's enough to make Elizabeth McGovern's First Noel sound almost tuneful...
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