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Eric knocks out an alternative carol for Christmas

Silent night?

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Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Silent Night? No it wasn’t a silent night, nor was it calm but the neon lights were bright. The huddled masses queued in the soulless stores looked up into the fluorescent tubed heights and hoped for angels, but none came. The shopped out hordes jostled and stomped in muttering hypnotised herds ‘cause they heard a great profit would come unto the land. They spent themselves in a spending spree beyond frenzied cliché , knowing they’d been good boys and girls and wanting Santa to stop over, on his way to helping children in Kenya to find fresh safe cholera free drinking water, to fill their stockings with fat satsumers, iPods and cash to see them through the dark fear that laid, like an old wet dog trapped in a cold sooty chimney, across their shoulders.

O they came, all the faithless, joyless and despairing, knowing that only gin, sherry and vol au-vonts could save them. No room at the Inn for them, no away-with-the-fairies-in-a-manger, for these were the shoppers, with a crazed look in their eye hiding their soulless passion for trinkets, brought by wise men, who kept their keen eyes on the profits. No myrrh, frankincense or gold today, just 50% off and two for one and none for all. Unpresent in their own existence as they sought to find the perfect present for Auntie Jeans’ next-door neighbours’ sisters’ girlfriends’ cat.

I saw three packed container ships go sailing by, on Christmas day, on Christmas day. I saw three shipping container ships converted into prisons on Christmas day in the morning. Little Nell, hopped past, desperately trying not to look too Dickensian and dragging a £4.99 Lidal’s turkey crown behind her, as the high street shuddered to a halt behind, and one by one the lights all slowly went out. Three Queens who -oddly enough- were dressed in Leyton Orient football gear were gift bearing bears and travelling afar, by Easyjet, over fields and fountains, across moors and mountains, with no thought about practical baggage. They desperately tried to follow far off Kylie, that yonder star.

Little Nell - preferring Boyzone - shrugged and hobbled off, quickly grabbing the very last hyacinth flavoured lip-gloss from the Body Shop and smiling smugly to herself. ‘Fa la la la la, la la, la la’ she hummed and popped in her pin number. It was bleak, mid-winter and Woolworth’s had shut but the shepherds, who up till now had been sure of their jobs watching safely over the sheep-by-night, until, that is, the abattoir men from Tesco’s came to call, cull, flench (look it up) and wrap with a little spring of rosemary, red wine jus, and a £5 markdown, were not worried. They knew that giving each other each other’s presence was going to mean that they all got exactly what they deserved.