Coasting Toward Christmas

To briefly continue the seasonal theme from Friday, I finally put up a Christmas tree yesterday.  I was prompted by the fact that the BBC Sports Personality of the Year was on TV.  I never watch it, but it has come to be my cue for putting up my modest Christmas decorations, as it is always a sure sign that Christmas is close when it is on.  Indeed, I'm pretty sure that, in recent years, the BBC has been showing it a week earlier than they used to - I'm sure that it used to be shown on the last Sunday before Christmas Day, rather than the last but one.  Of course, another sure sign that we're rapidly approaching the big day is the increased number of retrospectives of various aspects of the year appearing in the media.  These will get more frequent as the New Year approaches, but they've already started their appearance - today's G2 section of The Guardian, for instance, seemed to consist mainly on a variation on the theme: 'the people who make Christmas'.  In essence a 'top ten' type listing of various seasonally-linked occupations, with (very) brief profiles of the people who do them, these sorts of articles represent a quick and easy way for journalists to turn out copy at a time of year when, in reality, they can't actually be arsed to do any proper journalism.

As I've noted, it will get worse as we get closer to New Year, with the 'Top Ten Celebrity Farts of 2018' and such like.  Not that I blame them.  Hell, aren't we all trying to do as little as possible during this last full week before Christmas?  I know I am, (with little success so far - for my employers, Christmas simply represents a last opportunity to put me at risk before the holidays).  Quite frankly, I've got better things to do right now, ranging from collecting parcels from the sorting office to renewing my parking permit.  Time is rapidly running out to do all of these things before everything closes for Christmas.  I'm afraid that work just has to schedule itself around all this vital stuff.  At least I managed to finish my present shopping today.  I just have to wrap them now.  What I haven't even started yet is getting my own seasonal provisions in: so far I have no beer, no peanuts, no chocolate, no sausage rolls, even!  Damn it, these are the things that make Christmas!  I do have a package of DVDs on order from Amazon (that's the parcel waiting to be collected), but beyond that, I've done nothing.  Anyway, it did occur to me that perhaps I should coast through the festive season here, by replacing proper posts with 'Top Ten' type stuff.  You know: 'Top Ten Sleazy Films Watched in 2018', or 'Top Ten Most Humungous Dumps I Took in 2018'.  It's a thought, I suppose.