Christmas Number Two

Merry what, daaahling? Can't hear you

How I loathe festive music. Every year in the UK, there is a tawdry traditional scramble to be top of the increasingly meaningless music chart, by releasing the most schmaltzy, gooey, sugar-coated, banal, insipid slop that the latest Simon Cowell-inspired, two-dimensional, d-list, brainless, egocentric, half-baked flat-voiced media monkey can croon. (Mind you, I quite like Alexandara Burke.)

These treacle-laden ditties exist for a reason, and it's nothing to do with invoking the spirit of St. Nick. They make a huge wedge of wonga for the author, and continue to deliver the dollops of cash year after year. Because I am quite poor, and mercenary, I have therefore swallowed my scruples, and penned a potential festive hit. Unfortunately it's too rude to publish on this family blog. Leave a comment or mail if you want the lyrics but I warn you, it's not pretty.

Last year Mrs G and I were in town, taking coffee 'n' curly-wurly to refuel between sessions of frenzied grasping for over-priced nine-day-wonder tat for the kids. Picture the scene. We sit in what we take to be a quiet corner. We're adding up the credit card bill, to get some worrying in ahead of January, when on comes Maria Carey ("All I want for Christmas, is yooooo"). This song induces a murderous Pavlovian reaction in me whenever I hear it, so to avoid the ghastly bloodbath which may ensue, I ask the waitress to turn it down, or preferably off.

Flat refusal. The customers like it.

This customer doesn't, so he unplugs the speaker. Blessed silence and happy coffee, and pleasingly baffled waitress.

So I encourage you to do the same; keep some nail scissors in your pocket or bag, unless you're going on an aeroplane. Then when you hear the first chords of "When A Child Is Born", snip! And it's gone. Merry Christmas.

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P.S. The very lovely Vodka Logic has posted my 'New Santa's Hit' (watch that punctuation) at her sumptuous blog. Complete with tasteful illustrations!