Christmas Cheer

A week to go and I can't wait till it's over because I've always thought it a load of commercialised humbug. With kids and a wife that was an even bigger kid about Xmas I had to go along with it. Now that I'm on my own I can do it the way I want.

I do confess to sending Xmas cards to friends and family, who, of course, reciprocate and my sole concession to decorations is two bits of string over the ingle-nook on which I hang the cards.

I get round the presents dilemma in two ways, firstly with direct family I pay their air fare out here and entertain them to a summer holiday each year in lieu of birthday and Xmas presents. If they can't make it or don't want to that's hard luck to them and a cash bonus for me! Secondly with indirect family and friends they get cards but no presents,surprisingly, over the years they have stopped sending me presents !! There is one exception, a cousin, who refuses to play my game and sends me a jazz CD every birthday and Xmas; always making an excellent choice.

Returning to the Xmas decorations theme, like the UK, french people are decorating the outside of their houses with flashing or not electric lights (in the worst possible taste as someone famous but dead once said). Even in this remote corner of the country they do it and almost every other house has a Santa swarming up a rope or drainpipe and what is most disturbing about it all is that the worst excesses are perpetrated by young couples !!! There's even a woman round the corner who has draped her garden shed with coloured flashing lights; presumably the budget doesn't run to buying enough to do the house.

The youngest boy (who's here helping with the DIY) has, I fear, been affected, even brainwashed, by the flashing lights and Santas. I don't blame him as a walk round the village, after dark is like some fiendish chinese torture . He has rooted around in the barn and found an old imitation Xmas tree, which, when plugged in, shimmers with multi coloured fibre optic lights.

Although he professes not to be interested in Xmas, he's not had the benefit of my years of practice as an Xmas Scrooge so he can't resist the temptation of turning on the tree. I have discovered the perfect counter measure. It's a digital radio station that, at this time of the year, plays non stop Xmas music, rather like the Xmas Muzak one finds in super markets and shopping malls through out the western world.

So he plugs in; I switch on and it's then a question of who breaks first !!