Dunster by Candlelight - an annual late night shopping event in an Olde Worlde Village with lots of community entertainment.
Christmas present buying is looming high on my wife’s priorities so she has happily disappeared to our regional shopping mall just off the M5 at Bristol for a day’s shopping.
“Christmas present buying has got to be done”, she said, as she gave me a peck on the cheek before leaving.
So I’m left here at the Hopcott writing desk wondering how much pleasure will actually be achieved by the expenditure she will incur today and wondering if Christmas is – like paying your taxes – something that has to be done or something awful will happen.
Last year I capitulated and went with my wife to this mega shopping mall and got so depressed about the whole experience that a security guard in a big games and CD purchase shop actually approached me and asked if I was ‘all right?‘ It seems that he thought I was going to do something dangerous, like bursting into tears or running berserk with a pencil sharpener.
I felt so bad about the whole experience that I came home and wrote it up in a flash fiction called Shops and Retail Therapy, which made me feel slightly better and as if there was some small point to the day.
At the shopping mall, we had lunch in a very crowded fast food / pizza place where we had to queue before we were allowed to eat, we were packed shoulder to shoulder while we were eating, the stuff we were eating looked full of calories and extremely bad for me and, as soon as we had finished getting the stodge down our throats we started getting baleful looks from the people in the queue who were still waiting. The whole experience cost an arm and a leg! Fun indeed!
I wanted to take a few photographs in the mall which I thought might come in useful one day to give added interest to a story or article (about suicide maybe?) but everywhere I looked was trademarked property. If the security guards were getting sniffy by me even hanging around looking depressed, goodness only knows what their reaction would have been if I’d been taking photographs of them. Yup! I’m a faint hearted liberal and I definitely wasn’t going to find out – they looked really mean, a bit like the guy that used to bully me at school.
Come to think of it, the whole Christmas present thing is rather like bullying. ‘Buy Christmas presents or you will be really, really unhappy – and all the people around you will be really, really unhappy. You know it makes sense’
It doesn’t matter one iota that the Christmas presents you are buying are stuff those receiving the presents probably don’t want. It’s totally irrelevant that they, like me, are wondering where on earth the money is coming from to pay the credit card bill in January.
‘Happy New Year – you’re broke! Whoopee! Fun!’
OK, to be honest, I would like to give people Christmas presents and make them happy. I really am not a kill-joy Scrooge. The problem is that the Christmas presents I would like to give are the one’s that people don’t seem to want to receive.
I’d like to give my family a nice walk on Christmas Day! No chance, I’ve been trying to give that one for years.
‘Awwh, Dad! We’re tired.’
‘I’ve just got to deal with the turkey so we’ve got sandwiches for …’
About a year … sure!
Or what about giving the present of some tennis lessons given by good old Dad? No takers there, I’m afraid!
So, I’d better let my wife have a good time at the local mega shopping mall or wherever else she does the Christmas present shopping this year since nobody else seems to be on my planet about wondering if there is a point.
The picture is from Dunster by Candlelight – now that was fun!
Bye for now
Rob
Rob Hopcott – online writer
