JULIE
R WORLD with Julie Teckman
Hands up if you’re greeting the approaching festive season with equanimity (smugness, even) knowing that you’re almost fully ready for the busy months ahead, presents and cards bought in the January sales, already wrapped and labelled with self-made tags created from last year’s cards, roasting joints resting in the extra freezer in the garage ready to join the vegetables from the newly acquired allotment for the open house celebrations you traditionally enjoy over Christmas, tree already selected from the local tree farm, to be collected and decorated on December 1st (‘not too early, nor too late’) and the annual letter under construction, ready to email out to all and sundry whilst the money you save on cards goes straight to charity. Okay, put them down again, you are not my friends.
Now, hands up if you’ve started your annual Fes- tive season moan about the fact that Christmas cards and decorations went on sale before your were home from your summer holiday, that the price of everything goes up as soon as the C word is mentioned and who vow that the best time to shop is on Christmas Eve just before the shops shut because that’s when they ‘give every- thing away’, or go even further and give everyone vouchers that they can spend in the sales (ideal of course if you’re friends with a person who buys their Christmas gifts in the January sales, for obvious reasons, and ‘so much less hassle’ than having to choose things for people that they ‘probably won’t like anyway’). Well, you can put them down again too, because you’re not my friends either.
No, my gang consists of people like me. People
reasons) because we forgot to get it out of the freezer in time or, as I did last year, begging the butcher to open up as he locks his shop on Christmas Eve because I was late getting to him to pick up my fresh Norfolk turkey (ordered just after the deadline for ordering in advance!).
who get desperately excited as soon as the clocks go back (which is the appropriate time to get excited about the festive season I feel) and can’t wait to go Shopping with a Proper Purpose (hence the capitals). We’re the ones who make copious lists of what we’ll get for whom; how much food we need to buy and when will be best to get it given that the freezer is still full of sell-by reductions we never get round to eating; and update our Christmas card lists (no on-line mass circulated letters for us – we’ve nothing to say, for starters!).
T e trouble with my gang is that we never actually get around to doing the things we’ve so carefully listed until almost too late. T e present shopping in- evitably ends up as an orgy of ‘something for someone else, something for me’ or, as my sister does so well: a frenzy of buying anything that catches the eye in the hopes that it will all match to a friend or relative in the wrapping process.
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The present shopping inevitably ends up as an orgy of ‘something for someone else, something for me’
T e best bit of forward planning my gang attempts is to avoid the Christmas rush and buy over the internet or from those gorgeous catalogues that tempt us at this time of year. We spend hours and hours poring over unusual (and, often, pointless), and order far more than we should because we’re persuaded (largely as a re- sult of the mulled wine we’re pouring down our throats) that it’s cost-effi cient if we beat delivery charges. And then of course, the stuff arrives late, sells out before we get to it, or never arrives, creating last minute panic again!
But somehow, it all comes together. And while the super- effi cients are ready in good time and able to quaff champagne on
Let me tell you from experience – it never works. She always ends up with a pile of things she can’t give anybody and a batch of people with no gift (and a mad dash to the shops on Christmas Eve). We plan to send our cards at a reasonable time in early December, but end up missing the fi rst class deadline and having to keep fi ngers crossed they arrive in time by second class post, and fi nd ourselves defrosting the turkey with a hairdryer (not recommended for all kinds of
Christmas morning, knowing that everything will go like clockwork on the day; and the miser- ies will moan about how much it’s all costing and how next year they’ll DEFINITELY go somewhere hot and avoid the whole com- mercialised season; my gang (and let’s face it, we’re probably in the majority) will be rushing around and red-faced while we get the big event together, still wrapping at midnight and then hiding in the bathroom to quickly wrap one of those extra gifts for an unexpected guest, and eating whenever the food is fi nally ready.
And we’ll be loving every manic minute of it. Seasons Greetings x
www.r-magazine.co.uk 97
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