Oh look - it's bloody well Christmas time again, innit?

"Woooooaaaah"

Ohh...Is that the sound of Rudolph approaching?

...Eh, no. It was the sound of me falling flat on my arse as I glide non-too-gracefully over the frozen pavement. I'll never make it as a replacement for Torvil, or Dean (Uhm..which one WAS the woman? It's like Ant and Dec - for the life of me I have no idea which one was which, only with Torvil and Dean you have the added insult of implying one either looks too masculine or the other looks a bit effeminate. Which isn't what I was meaning... but... hey ho...).

Walking into town became a slighly more hazardous (albeit quite fun, if you're in the mood for winter-sports) affair recently, what with all the black ice and wintery gales. Which all meant I started bitterly regretting the decision to come back to the UK just when the weather has taken on the temperature range of Simon Cowell's heart.

It got so bad that, in fact, I wondered if this was indeed what hell-freezing-over felt like. Not hard to imagine, I should add, in a town populated by men dimmer than 10-watt bulbs, and a quota of pregnant teens that would frighten even the writers of the most cutting docu-dramas. Seriously. I mean, I recently started working in a shop that, well, caters to both neds (chavs, for you English) and the more up-market clientele (middle-class chavs - mavs - very possibly?). And its not like I really am that snobbish (no, really) - but my 16-year-old colleague did mention in passing that she's been pregnant twice (and had the issue subsequently 'fixed', twice) and her mate is now pregnant, too (and will be going forthwith to the docs to get the issue 'fixed').

I'm all for women's freedom of choice, I should add, but what disturbs me is that these girls (and they are still very much girls, of the giggly, eye-fluttery 'Oooh-I-think-he-fancies-me' variety, regardless of how sexualised they've become) appear to use abortion as a contraceptive tool (and are chillingly matter-of-fact about the decision), and that they seem to consider other forms of contraception rather inconvenient, because their boyfriends can't wait long enough to put on a condom, and they 'keep forgetting to take the pill'. Oh-my-God (Cue eye rolling, of the super-girly I-must-be such-a-bitch-to-think-you're-a-moron variety). So much for the fecking Virgin Mary in this town.

Anyway, I have now found myself gainful employ with the kind of company that considers an appropriate wage to be something approximating peanuts, (Yes, it's true. I've joined the circus).

I now find myself stacking shelves and hiding from customers in case they ask me questions about the multitude of products available and I inadvertently say; "Oh, I wouldn't know. I don't buy this shit." My bosses seem to communicate to each other oooh, about once a decade, because I constantly get told to do one thing, before being told by another of equal heirarchy that the 'one thing' MUST NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BE DONE. Yes. Well. I've already done it, so there. There are, in fact, at least five bosses at any one time walking about the shop/public fly-tip rather importantly, wearing grey suits and faces that make Jack Dee look positively ecstatic with joy. Combine that with, uhm, the three members of staff who are standing looking shell-shocked by the barrage of products and prices they are expected to know about, and just imagine the chaos.

And the thing that bugs me most... that the grey-suited ones will cross the shop floor, taking a full 10 minutes to dodge the old ladies with solid concrete handbags (Have you ever walked into one inadvertantly? What on earth do they put in those handbags? Their life savings in gold bars?) just to tell me that something has dropped on the floor and could I please pick it up? Have you looked around you? The place is a shit-hole. It resembles the bastard spawn of a jumble sale and an elephant rampage. I started picking the crap off the floor in 1992, and I've not stopped since, you moron.

So now IT'S NEARLY CHRISTMAS and the panic has set in. The weather is warmer - plus point, there. The shop is busier. NOT a plus-point. Cue more grey-suited ones (I swear they breed somewhere in the stockroom - one goes down to get more crap to fill the bulging shelves with, and two more come back up... I shit you not) and less floor space. I've in the process of trying to learn transcendal meditation, just so I can hover above shit-on-floor level and avoid standing on anything too precious (ha!).

Panic has also set in at home. Christmas seems to have crept up stealth-like over the last few weeks. I blame the Christmas choons in shops. They start in November (or even October) and lull you into a false sense of security. They've been on so long they start to make you think Christmas will never arrive. I personally feel Noddy Holder has a lot to answer for... and that bloody Live Aid song... with: "Tonight thank God it's them instead of youuuu.." (all rounded off with a soaring chorus of "Do they know it's Christmas-time at aaaallll?...").

Well, quite frankly I feel that's a rather callous response to poverty and starvation in the world, akin to saying: "Well I've got my lovely roast turkey with all the trimmings, but some poor sod hasn't. Thank Christ it ain't me, then, eh?" A kind of fingers up to all the needy... but in song... sung by extremely wealthy people who could, if they so desired, donate even an nth of their income and it would probably be more than the whole of one country's annual GDP. And then they ask us, the little, skint sods who are working all the hours God sends at Christmas, to spend our hard-earned cash on their Charity single so that they don't actually have to put their own money where their mouths are. And so we buy the single and for the next 25 years hear it played annually over-and-over-and-over again...in shops, on t'radio...in t'pub (is nowhere sacred?). What was the point of buying it in the first place, then, eh? So I could listen to it at home, too? Are you joking?

Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas, everyone.

P.s. I should point out that I latterly realised that hell could not have - as previously imagined - frozen over because I was still skint, Johnny Depp had failed to realise I was the woman of his dreams and declared undying love for me, and Scotland was still a nation with the kind of sporting prowess that makes one say "It's not the winning that counts, it's the taking part...".

Yeah, sure it is.