Closing time

17 December, 2012 (11:42) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

I wonder how many market towns there are in the country around which you could walk, on the Saturday before Christmas, and find some of the shops have shut early.

There’s certainly one such in Cornwall: we trooped around Launceston on Saturday from about 2.30pm and several had the ‘closed’ signs up.  Not all, by any stretch, had Christmas decorations.

I’ve visited another couple of local market towns, too, for various reasons in the last couple of weeks. I haven’t heard so much as one out-of-tune parp from a local brass band or one “ho-ho-ho” from a jovial Santa. Noddy Holder and The Pogues have been everywhere, though, booming out from that one Christmas hits CD everybody possesses.

(Fairytale of New York must be unique as a masterpiece that has now been rendered powerless by repetition: I can’t think of another great song that has lost its greatness through overplaying. And don’t mention Noddy Holder. I said great song).

What I have seen are the servants of Beelzebub, clad in tinselled deely-boppers and Santa hats, surrounded by twinkly lights and festive money-off offers, ear-rings flashing Yuletide joy backed by the soulless Satanic beep of the frozen factory turkeys passing over the scanner. Out of town, the superstores have had money-raising bag packers and brass band carols.

Is that it, then? Are the market towns running up the white flag? Has the heart of our community finally left the town centre for the concrete-and-glass wasteland of the superstores and the giant garden centres where Santa seems to live now? Have the towns surrendered to the mighty internet?

I don’t know. I do know that one of my fond childhood memories of Christmas is of walking around town in the cold, the dusk twinkling in the fairy lights, the band playing, with feathers of breath frosting from around the mouthpieces, shopkeepers handing out sweets and mince pies, tinsel everywhere.

You don’t get that at the supermarket or on the internet. You get better prices and more convenience and an easier life, but you don’t get any magic and you don’t get any memories.

Hands – and noses – full

Now I must apologise for keeping it short this week, but my hands are, as ever, full: Fraser Minor Minor is at home coughing like Richard Burton after a night on the town with Peter O’Toole. Management, Fraser Minor and I have all been afflicted too, though only one of us has been stoic. It has improved communication lines from Management, however, in that coughs, spits and hawks have been added to snarls, so that’s something.

Colds are a central plank of evidence in the theory that we are living in the end days, for even colds aren’t as good as they used to be. Modern colds last so damned long. Brother Fiddle, in fact, has been lying weakly upon his sick bed for about five years now, the poor sod, and tells me the wretched affliction has moved from his snotty nose to his congested chest to his sense of humour. Fraser Minor Minor has done nothing but cough for three solid days now.

You can see the claw of the Coconut-Eating Crab, the malevolent deity whose cold desire for revenge rules our seeking-the-unattainable lives, at his or her vicious work: first the rain, then the ice, now the illness. And next? Christmas. The bastard.

Comments

Comment from StentsRus
Time December 17, 2012 at 12:54 pm

Why not fetch the rusty sword, end it all and put us all out of our misery?
More “interesting and earth shatteringly important news” from….you guessed….the BBC
Spotlight Headline Story of the day (thinktank says)….thousands could now be in “fuel poverty”
we all are you stupid twats…it’s frikkin winter or haven’t you bleedin noticed.
Oh…and the other important piece of crap from the same source…”don’t cook whilst drunk”
miserable bastards! MERRY CHRISTMAS
ps apologies for the seasonal language.

Comment from hamster
Time December 18, 2012 at 6:46 pm

I dunno if Shane MacGowan and his three year old teeth mind too much, after all they eat out (and drink) all year on the back of that track!

Comment from hamster
Time December 21, 2012 at 2:04 pm

This weeks Hamster Top Tip – Don’t believe everything you hear! Some nutter in a tractor stopped me in the road this morning and he shouted “the end is nigh, today will be the end of the world”. Turns out, it was Farmer Geddon.

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