"Get Gorgeous This Christmas" advise those intensely irritating television ads. Get half-shot would be more like it. But how? writes Michael Parsons.
You're trapped in a humdrum shopping centre and there's not a public house in sight. What you wouldn't give for a large Jameson. Instead, the only "refreshments" on offer appear to be freshly pressed carrot and lime juice or gruel-like concoctions called "smoothies" from alarmingly clinical looking "juice bars".
Even a coffee is difficult to find. There's a joint selling beakers the size of posset cups filled with a foaming pale fluid to which baristas add measures of sickly-looking syrup and a shake of powder. And marshmallows. The result is the sort of swill that might be produced by a four-year-old on the loose in the kitchen with a Magimix.
And that ghastly music pumping out of every PA system in town. Call those Christmas carols? Some broad screeching about "Sanna Claws" or Cliff Richard crooning about mistletoe and wine. Not that Mr Goody-Two-Shoes would know much about either. And insufferable radio deejays braying about "your favourite all-time Christmas classics" (PS: they're not) and then playing Boney M's Mary's Boy Child - Oh My Lord, or the unutterably vile Band Aid bilge, or Mud's Lonely This Christmas (Ah, if only).
And the bum with the awful teeth and his boys from the NYPD choir are still singing Galway Bay in downtown Manhattan. And talking of the Big Apple, people one hardly knows - like the cleaning lady in the office, the girl at the supermarket checkout or the fellow who does the neighbour's garden - ask good-naturedly if you'd "like anything from New York". Stunned by the question, you answer, "No, Thank you, nothing at all. Sure aren't there plenty of shops here?" And they look at you like you had a screw loose.
And the lights! What a scandalous waste of energy. Haven't these people heard of global warming? Did you see that house with the sleigh and reindeers on the roof? It illuminates half the M50, apparently, and is visible from the Space Station. Someone said they've used 2,000 bulbs. And the grotto in that garden near the roundabout? Wait till they get their electricity bills in January. That'll teach them.
And did you see those ads for Marks & Spencer? "Let's get this party started?" they've been saying. Since November, if you don't mind. What do they mean - "Yo! Joseph, get a move on and find that stable, the canapés are getting cold and the champagne is losing its fizz"? And supermarkets advising you not to panic. Stock up now. For what? Superquinn is closing for a mere two days. How much food do people need for 48 hours?
And try getting a table in a restaurant. They're all full of people from "accounts" getting stocious at "lunch". It's 5pm. "Oh, we could fit you in on Tuesday week at 11.45am but you'll have to give up the table for 1pm." And there's a €50 deposit per person. And a set menu. You just want a table for two this evening. But the maitre d' isn't listening and couldn't care less if that doesn't suit you because he's already on the telephone taking a reservation from the Bank of Grand Cayman (Ireland) Ltd for a party of 30 for lunch at 4pm tomorrow. Imagine. He took the call while he was talking to you. The insolence!
Everywhere there are special displays of "fun" presents (retail shorthand for stuff that absolutely no one could possibly want but desperate "last-minute" shoppers will buy) - such as Home Cocktail Kits or Grow Your Own Bonsai. Homer Simpson socks or novelty festive ties which light up and play Jingle Bells are appropriate gifts for men, but only if they happen to be detained in a maximum security wing.
But it's all your own fault. What possessed you to ask those spoilt little brats - sorry, darling best friend's children - what they'd like for Christmas? Oh how you wish you had stuck to your Trócaire guns. You were all decided on a three-week supply of water purification tablets for Sarah (enough to supply a whole village in Sudan) and a goat, destined for Yemen, for Oisín. But they conned you with the guile of French diplomats negotiating CAP reform by responding to "Why is Christmas special?" with tiny voices going on about "a little baby in a manger". Which brought a lump to your throat (though maybe that was the Cabernet Sauvignon) and before you knew where you were they were reeling off a list of demands longer than Mr Adams's at St Andrew's.
And now you find yourself in a department store as noisy and shiny as the stage set for The Ladyboys of Bangkok looking for "Roboreptile" or an "Air Hogs Zero Gravity Hummer" for him, and either "Bratz Forever Diamondz" or a "Fur-Real Butterscotch" for her. You have no idea what these objects look like. And there's nobody to serve you. Eventually, an "assistant", who looks about 14, with a pierced eyebrow and a contemptuously curled lip, tells you that they've "all sold out ages ago" and "you could try Henry Street". And you head off, feeling murderous about the overwhelming commercial vulgarity of it all.
Crossing College Green, you overhear a distraught woman on her "mobile" saying she's "after trying everywhere for an 'Amazing Alison'". And you stop and tell her where you saw one earlier. And she gives you "a big hug" and tells you, excitedly, that you've "made" her daughter's Christmas. Aaaaah. Isn't it great, all the same?