Entry 29: Baby Please Come Home For Christmas

What with the first semester over and my flatmates now all gone leaving me in a lonely puddle of my own urine, I find myself in a lull before going yem to Newcastle in the next few days. This first semester at university, was my last first semester at university, and I accept that sentence made less sense than Predator 2 but I think this is the reason why I am feeling so wistful and nostalgic. Actually my life would probably be stagnating right now if it weren’t for the internet connection here keeping things interesting, since my laptop keeps forgetting it exists, like some sort of bandwidth amnesia; like a particularly shit re-telling of the Bourne Ultimatum with the role of shady NSA handlers being played by Plusnet wireless broadband. I’ve had a wail of a time playing duck-duck-goose with my own router but it’s becoming patently clear that I need to get out more.

This semester has been succesful in some respects. I joined a bunch of societies like I meant to, which led to free tickets to the premiere of Skyfall and coming third in a particularly fierce spree at a Halo tournament. I also joined up to the Edge gym to use the pool. It’s quite a nice pool actually, and it's nice to be able to skip over any human interaction with the reception staff by swiping a card through a turnstile. Although there is a swim club on most evenings, so the far lanes are usually occupied by legions of Tom Daleyites strutting about in swim hats and budgie smugglers, with a ginger attendant barking commands at them in the exact tenor utilised by cockeny marketmen to sell dodgy electronics, out of a van. It gives swimming sessions a rather militant feel. On the plus side I have a job to go to even if I spend it mostly wishing I was doing something I wanted to do, and feeling a bit like the check-out girl in Fast Car. As a side note to people who know that song I feel the lyric, “Is it fast enough so we can fly away?” makes it pretty clear that maybe Tracy Chapman doesn’t really get how cars work and probably shouldn’t have used it as a framing device for a hit single...

Anyway, moving on.
 
 I job-hunted for the better part of six months and it was through no small serendipity that I stumbled on an ad for a recruitment agency. Ever since they’ve been pinging me between department stores like a game of pinball. It’s been okay since the customers are mostly nice and the job, that of selling perfumes, is quite easy since perfumes have one very obvious selling point; namely that they smell quite nice. However, not being permanent staff means you have to wear a large ‘Visitor’ badge at all times, which frequently engenders the question ‘Oh, do you work here?’. Customers seem to think I either a), get up early on Sunday mornings, and stand about smiling encouragingly at passers-by dressed entirely in black, for no particular reason, or that I b), actually work there.When not getting paid to work, then usually I am paying to work. The second, paid-for work is what some people call University, and it is currently manifesting itself in the form of a 2000 word essay on Jurisprudence.  It means I am back to my old haunt in the Brotherton library, which is probably one of the more breathtaking buildings in Leeds and so I often find myself drifting off and staring lazily at the architecture.


Complicating matters is the small problem of Jurisprudence itself. I’ll aim not to go on about it like one of those insufferable wankers who discuss their course at all times to try and look academic; the sort of people who say that they ‘read’ a subject, a phrase used almost exclusively by dickheads. I don’t ‘read’ Law, I ‘read’ the bloody Beano. Most modules on the course are presented through a series of judicial case law hinging on various ‘tests’ and ‘standards’ that judges use to sort shit out. Learning an area of the law is like riding a horse. The caselaw forms the bare bones or skeleton that supports your understanding of it, with theories and commentary forming everything else like the hooves and the tail and all that (bear with me). Jurisprudence by contrast is a spongy mess of theory and comment without the bony framework of caselaw to support it. Instead of riding a horse you wind up atop a pulpy mess of tendon and sinew, crying ‘giddy-up’. It’s not that it’s a bad course, in fact the materials have been easily attainable and the teaching of a high standard, it’s just quite difficult. So yes, pulpy-sinew-horse riding.

Also it’s not easy being gay at the moment is it. It’s not like being gay doesn’t come without its quirks as it is. First of all there’s the lag in emotional development precipitated by having to ‘come out’, a task so arduous that most people put it off for a bit. And then to boot there is the tautology of despising the same people that you find attractive. If you’re a straight man then when you see a girl you might say ‘she’s pretty’ and that would be that, but if you bat for the other side you wind up making depreciative comparisons between you and the object of your pathetic fancies. It’s not just ‘they’re alright’ but it soon becomes ‘they are so much more alright than me’ and eventually you wind up thinking how much nicer his jacket is than any of yours at home are, and how even if you had that jacket you wouldn’t fill it out as well, and that basically you could make the world a better place by going swimming with a couple of breezeblocks laced to your feet . You end up envying the same people you are supposed to be finding attractive.

Now there’s the issue of gay marriage which has been back in the news lately since the conservatives are considering actually making it a thing.  Considering the Tories eat money and shit dead children it is a tad surprising the guffawing bastards are making moves towards equality in marriage. Of course there are plenty of arguments being ventured to block it. Some are fairly idiotic. Take David Davies telling BBC Wales on Sunday that people don’t want their kids to be gay because they, quote,“want grandchildren if nothing else”. Some critics of gay marriage are using the legal requirement to consummate the marriage as a reason it shouldn’t be a thing, which is stupid since a simple amendment could reformulate the definition to make it buggery-friendly. Even now it’s a token requirement since it’s generally presumed the newlyweds will get at it at some point, and only a few, very bitter spouses have ever divorced based on failure to consummate. This is all rather silly, and yet there are some fairly logical reasons why it shouldn’t be a thing as well. Namely because it’s pretty much already a thing. The reason civil partnership is tacked on as a prefix of marriage is because legally at least they are pretty much identical, with some obvious variations in that you can have a religious marriage ceremony but not a religious civil partnership. Personally I don’t think it is really worth the effort, and maybe the gay community could focus on something more pressing like not liking so much shit music.

 The sooner, the better.

As you may have noticed this particular article entry is about as coherent and organised as a series of memos tacked to a corkboard made of warm macaroni cheese but whatever. Finally, Christmas. I am genuinely quite looking forward to Christmas which goes against my better judgment. Wintertime is my favorite time of year, what with the lovely crisp mornings and the snow, even if the cold isn't so great; especially when you first get up in the morning and your 'nads recede upwards like a couple of frightened acorns hiding from a particularly hungry squirrel. It’s been a long while since I’ve been home and I am looking forward to getting back to the North. Tynemouth is very pretty around this time of year. There’s three ways you can see Christmas; as a pagan festival, as a celebration of goodwill, or as an excessive demonstration in the extent of commercialism. The three meanings are hopelessly intertwined, but I choose to see it as the second.  Say what you like, but there are few times through the long year that you have laid before you all you need. Friends, family, good food, love, laughter, and goodwill; these few little comforts that make up a life. One day it won’t be me going home for Christmas, it will be the other way round. It’s strange to think that one day you won’t be filling the child’s role anymore, and instead you’ll be the one carving the turkey, with a table of happy faces looking back at you. It’s a strange thought. But it’s nearly Christmas Eve now, and in a few days I’ll be home. Christmas Eve truly is my favourite day of the year; it’s the expectation, the thought of thousands of happy families, thousands of very excited children, all round the country, coming together just for a few days. It’s the tangible, invisible feeling of goodwill that seems to pervade the whole evening.

But I do always feel a bit strange around this time of year. Maybe remorseful. Say what you like, but the end of a year can’t help but make you wonder where you might be bound. There were plenty of silly memories from working on an aftershave concession. But one was anything but. While I was on my shift, this very small old lady came up to me. One of those old ladies that seem to be impeccably well presented at all times; the kind who have gloves to read the paper. She was asking me about an old perfume, and whether we stocked it; I was surprised to find we actually did. Big fragrance companies are fairly ruthless in discontinuing older perfume lines, I said to her. She decided to buy the biggest bottle we had, a 200ml job. I was pleased since it would go a long way towards my target for the day. When she had bought it she came back up to me and said;

 ‘Thank you for helping me, I think I might as well treat myself. I suppose I may well not live to see another.’  

Then she turned and slowly made her way through the buzzing throng of impatient shoppers. I watched her little translucent mac bob away through the crowd, until she had disappeared completely. And I found myself feeling so strange, I just stared off at the place she had been, as a couple of impatient toffs barked some commands pertaining to Boss Orange in my ear. It seemed so crushingly sad, to be aware of your own mortality like that, to gauge your life based on a generously sized bottle of perfume. It really sent it home for me that maybe it wouldn’t be so long until I was in her position. It’s easy to say Christmas is a consumerist facade. In many ways it is. But there is still such a thing as the festive spirit.  Take the time to truly appreciate what you have; because chances are it will be right there in front of you on Christmas Day. To the few bored souls who actually read anything I write here, I do truly appreciate it. Have a very, very merry Christmas, let your heart be light, but, if you do intend to make the yuletide gay, don’t tell David Davies MP.  He wants grandkids if nothing else.