Christmas is worse in London. I know because I used to live there. As soon as the weather drifts into that relentless crushing coldness, typified by low hanging clouds, unnaturally crisp and thick like in an 18th century painting, supermarkets across Britain seductively place festive-coloured chocolates at the start of the aisles and businesses make tentative arrangements for another potentially humiliating and shoulder-achingly awkward 'xmas' party.
For me, the clouds in England reflect the feelings of those (Londoners are not known for their subtlety when is comes to broadcasting grievances) who scurry beneath them. The heaviness of the times are mirrored in those giant ballooning puffs of clouds, obese yet sharp.
Christmas would be worse in London, I tell myself, trying on some seasonal optimism which still sounds cynical- obviously a remarkable achievement. It’s not that I’m a negative person or even hate Christmas, It’s just that I’m a not a member of an expansive brood who all come together at this time, leaving behind the routines of their normal life, shutting off all lines of communication par the Boxing day test Cricket. I can never decide whether I’m jealous of this fictional family I seem to have created in my mind for the sake of having something to hate, or whether I just genuinely hate boring families who consider themselves the epitome of all things interesting/healthy/happy/beautiful/Australian. Maybe I’ve read one too many Sunday Life magazines; spent too long gazing at glowing lean couples carrying curly-haired beachy kids on their hips with the effortless manner only someone who spends hours doing lateral pull downs and bench presses at the gym could pull off. I think I'm losing track of who I hate more...
In London, Christmas begins in October with the lights, and then come the trees in November and finally all the shopping, food arrangements for vegan sisters and travel planning send Londoners into a state of neurotic shock. At least in Australia there’s so much daylight at this time of year Christmas lights are ostensibly futile.
Christmas is like being in limbo, without work to keep your mind busy, and not totally looking forward to all the time spent with people you really don't know that well.
It also comes with its own set of expectations and the feeling that it serves as a sort of highly dysfunctional training course for my future life when I will become one of those lucky people with 2.5 kids and husband; the virtue of which will see my name scorched into history over any of my other life achievements- ones which don't involve reproduction or cooking. Deafening applause awaits the birth of my fist child…along with my own deafening screams as the little version of me ‘pops’ out of my hideously expanded vagina. But that's just worse-case-scenario if the drugs don't work.
