Jingle Jangle Hells Bells

Last night, someone asked me an innocent and innocuous question and something strange happened… I can’t think of a good way to describe it… For want of a better expression, I’d say my whole body just spazzed out. Both my shoulders launched themselves towards my ears, I just about kept my left hand on the steering wheel whilst my right hand shot up into bangra style change the light bulb moves. My head jutting like the funky chicken thing that happens when pilots are put into gravity spins until they black out, then they come back around… I felt my jaw moving up and down, no sounds escaping as my brain flooded with multiple streams of answers crammed into a microsecond. No! I don’t think it’s going to snow soon! What? Why? Do I look like a fucking weather man? Seriously?! In Leicester?! Snow in November in Leicester?? February! Maybe 3mm in Feb… You’ve said nothing for 45mins and this is all you come up with! Why do I have to take YOU home? Why can’t you just get a fucking uber or the bus like the rest of the staff? How come you have time and money for 40 fags a day and Costa coffee but you can’t get yourself to and from work? Do I think it’s going to snow soon?  Fucking snow? How come you’re always too tired or too cold? Why do you even think I give a fuck? It’s weather! Just fucking weather! Eventually I made a strange pfft/choking sound… Or maybe it was the sound of my will to live leaving my body… My dead eyed passenger looks at me – So is that a no then? I stare at the bridge over the canal and wonder how fast I’d have to drive into it to smash through and end up in the water… The thought of drowning feels strangely comforting… I think about the afterlife waiting room in Beetlejuice… Hmm… Nope let’s stay on the road… If I’m going to risk being stuck for nigh on eternity then I need better company and fresh nail polish… The tiny chip invisible to others is already driving me bonkers…

I decide I need to book some time off… I wonder why I glitched out…

This morning driving on my own, I lunge at the radio to switch channels as I shout out – Holy Fuck NO! Make it stop! Ah… OK… I have Xmas fatigue and there’s still a month left to go… I have Xmas fatigue because I saw the first set of Xmas lights go up on Nov 1st… And for the last two bastard weeks, it’s been getting harder and harder to find a station that’s not playing festive tunes or endless chatter about let’s start Xmas now! 2020 and Lockdown has been so bad that we need a 6 week Xmas to cheer us up! Kill. Me. Now.

Seriously? Are you pulling my baubles?! Have you people got some kind of memory loss? I mean any other year, and it’s survival tips and how not to throat punch your odious in-laws… I opted out of Xmas a long time ago… I say opted out, it was more a decision to do it on my own terms. It’s actually one of the few things that Mr S and I fully agree on. Every year, I hear people complain in the run up to Xmas about how they don’t want to do this that or the other… Then post Xmas, all the trauma tales… And I thought oh maybe this year, people are going to be happy that they don’t have to invent excuses, feign illness etc etc etc to try avoid those great Brit traditions such as getting someone in a headlock and knocking over the buffet table… But no… This year, no, no one wants to stuff an annoying elderly relative face down into a trifle… No… This year, people are whining because the picture perfect crimbo is off the cards… Somehow all these seasoned seasonal moaners have overwritten all their crappy memories and convinced themselves that they’re being deprived of some idyllic fantasy of a day where everything is just so and even in Leicester the snow falls into pristine drifts…

Ain’t I the cheery fucker?! 🤣 I’m just laughing away to myself as the sun hits the disco ball that’s been hung on my ceiling since two Christmases ago… Squares of rose and gold splatter my walls… I weary sigh that today its been announced that Leicester will be moving into even stricter tier 3 lockdown… I need to download a non festive play list… I need to stay away from bridges over canals… I need to repaint my nails (just in case…).