Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Santa Claus is coming
My wife, as I may have mentioned before, is an amazing woman. She has an incredible energy, which I sometimes find a bit scary, but is usually a force for good. She is also determined and dogged. This may be something to do with her Scottish ancestry. Her latest idea is a good example of what I am sometimes up against.
The boss has seen some pictures in a magazine of some Christmas lights. Now she loves Christmas – takes it upon herself to organise kids’ parties, decorations, celebrations, and the whole Christmas process for the entire extended family. This usually involves some poor sod sweating his arse off in a Santa suit in the middle of a Cape Town summer. (Footnote: South Africa has inherited the northern hemisphere Christmas trimmings of snowmen and robins even though December is summer down here. You thought fake snow looked weird in London…?) This year’s Christmas is showing signs of getting out of hand as usual, and my self-appointed role is to play Scrooge to try and tone down some of the wilder excesses.
Back to the Christmas lights. We are not talking here about fairy lights for the tree. Got those: indoor & outdoor varieties, flashing and non-flashing, white & coloured. Nope. We are talking illuminate your house, cause power shortages, divert aircraft to land in your back garden lights. Rudolf with a flashing nose, Santa parachuting down the chimney, ten foot neon Christmas trees. Take a look at these pictures, and you will see what I am afraid of. And she says the kids will love it. She’s probably right. It’s going to give me nightmares, though. Oh shit. Only a few weeks to talk her out of it too…
The boss has seen some pictures in a magazine of some Christmas lights. Now she loves Christmas – takes it upon herself to organise kids’ parties, decorations, celebrations, and the whole Christmas process for the entire extended family. This usually involves some poor sod sweating his arse off in a Santa suit in the middle of a Cape Town summer. (Footnote: South Africa has inherited the northern hemisphere Christmas trimmings of snowmen and robins even though December is summer down here. You thought fake snow looked weird in London…?) This year’s Christmas is showing signs of getting out of hand as usual, and my self-appointed role is to play Scrooge to try and tone down some of the wilder excesses.
Back to the Christmas lights. We are not talking here about fairy lights for the tree. Got those: indoor & outdoor varieties, flashing and non-flashing, white & coloured. Nope. We are talking illuminate your house, cause power shortages, divert aircraft to land in your back garden lights. Rudolf with a flashing nose, Santa parachuting down the chimney, ten foot neon Christmas trees. Take a look at these pictures, and you will see what I am afraid of. And she says the kids will love it. She’s probably right. It’s going to give me nightmares, though. Oh shit. Only a few weeks to talk her out of it too…
