How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [114]
And then, when you get to whatever godforsaken hellhole the travel agent has recommended, the weather is all wrong. Even in Australia they send seasonal cards with robins on them, and all of us know that Jesus was born in a blizzard. It’s a fact. That’s why the shepherds came down from the hills. Because they wanted to get warm.
Have you ever tried singing ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ when it’s 90°F in the shade? It’s as wrong as playing ‘The Birdie Song’ at a funeral. Or singing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ while watching Manchester United.
Christmas abroad confuses the hell out of young children as well. The hotel I stayed at in the Caribbean laid on a special treat, with Santa coming down the drive in a horse and cart. But the lack of antlers and skis was not what baffled my five-year-old most of all. ‘Daddy,’ she squeaked, ‘Santa’s all brown.’
You try explaining your way out of that one. ‘Yes, well, I know that Santa at home is a drunken white paedophile who hangs around in shopping centres with a tent pole in his trousers but here he’s called Winston and he’s er … er …’ There’s a much bigger problem, though, with the other people you encounter while on a Christmas break. In short, they are almost all very nasty, and there’s a good reason for this.
Think about it. At this time of year, there are many parties. People are in a convivial mood and everyone’s welcome. The roads are full of happy, cheery people whizzing from drinks do to lunch at the pub with mates. And then: ‘Sorry, we’ve got to go; we’re at the Fotheringtons’ tonight …’ The only reason you might choose to go away and miss all this is that you haven’t been invited to anything. And the only reason you haven’t been invited is that no one likes you. Ipso facto every single person who goes away at Christmastime is either a dullard or extremely unpleasant. And that means the hotel bar will be a complete no-go area.
On my one and only Christmas holiday, while I waited for my silly drink with an umbrella in it, I was approached by a man who spent an hour reeling off Aston Martin chassis numbers. I thought for the first thirty minutes I might kill myself. And then for the next thirty that it’d be better for all concerned if I killed him. I didn’t, which means this Christmas he’s still out there, lurking behind a pot plant with his adenoids and sandals. And because the courts have said the BA staff must work, you might be meeting him. You will also be trying to stuff down six sheets of roast turkey and gravy shortly after a dust devil has left it coated with a veneer of sand.
And working out how on earth you will get the mini submarine your wife gave you on Christmas Day home in your suitcase.
You’ll also have the usual, year-round travel problems. You’ll have to queue for six hours so that someone can X-ray your shoes and confiscate your toothpaste. You’ll get deep-vein thrombosis and sunburn and explosive diarrhoea and chlamydia.
Sure, it’s nice to be warm when it’s cold back at home. But Christmas is supposed to be cold. It’s supposed to be a time of families and friends, and trees and log fires, and useless nutcrackers and horrid jumpers, and falling asleep in front of the Queen.
So trust me on this. If you are going away at Christmas, twang the hostesses’ suspender belts when they walk by and call the stewards ‘ducky’. That way, they will ignore the courts next year and strike anyway. Then you won’t have to go away again.
Sunday 20 December 2009
So, Piggy, Buttocks and Rat – what shall we call Gordon?
As we know, there is an awful lot wrong with the education system in Britain. Nobody learns to read or write, most children are stabbed, no primary teachers have scrotums, there are too many managers, history is almost nonexistent and too much emphasis is placed on league tables – it’s a school, for crying out loud, not the second division in football. But the thing that’s wrongest of all is that, so far