A day spent heading up north and heading back. On my way home I realised I had spent practically the whole day inside train carriages and meeting rooms. I could have been anywhere and it could have been any time. I had lost any sense of place or season. When I arrived home I was greeted by a group of carol singers. It immediately felt like Christmas. It immediately felt like home.
Some tinsel has appeared behind my monitor at work. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I like Christmas. I like Christmas decorations. I’m perfectly fine with tinsel – I’m not fussed about keeping Christmas tasteful. However, I do have my reservations about organised fun. I’ll be the one to choose when I have fun, thank you very much. And my strip-lit, hermetically sealed office is never going to feel truly festive, no matter how much tinsel you throw at it. But then again, maybe the lack of tinsel is what makes it work somehow. I appreciate the lack of real effort. Just a bit of tinsel draped on a desk partition. It is a bit rubbish, like an office Christmas should be.
An early morning trip to a local shopping centre. The decorations gave away Christmas is on its way, but the lack of bustling shoppers made for a strange experience. It was hard to tell if we’re still in the Christmas shopping phoney war, or if everyone was shopping elsewhere, or if they were just having another half hour in bed.
On my lunchtime walk I came across two guys delivering Christmas trees. One was having a fag and drew attention to the whole enterprise by wearing a kilt and branded fleece. I guess he was the face of the operation. The other was sorting through the trees, getting the right one out. He wasn’t wearing a kilt. They have obviously discovered their niche. I wondered if they were Christmas tree growers all year, preparing for the big rush in December, or if they did something else from January to November before joining in the festive commerce. Either way I guess this sort of thing is big business now. It isn’t enough for a workplace to just send someone out to buy a tree and some decorations. It is now a professional enterprise.
Wait until next year 