Like Christmas. But worse...
Exactly how much shite can one man buy on eBay? A Newsletter to find out...
Welcome to December, and what must mean that this newsletter is a whole year old! Thanks for reading, thanks for sharing - I genuinely appreciate every single subscriber and your support.
Now seems as good a time as any to talk about that time that Lee Saved Christmas. If we're using solely my point of view, (which as we'll see is up for debate), it could also be known as the time that Lee Or I In The Interests Of Balance, Fucked, But Then Saved, Christmas. Really, strictly speaking, this incident could also be known as That Time We Really Put A Dampener On Christmas Day For The Rest Of My Extended Family, Very Nearly Got Divorced, But Nevertheless, Also Saved Christmas.
Let's backtrack. Imagine if you will, a jolly scene. It's Christmas Eve. The children are excited, charging around in their pyjamas, the fire is crackling away, and my entire extended family are gathered around the large table in my mum and dad's house, merrily tucking into some cheese, some wine. Everyone is happy. All is well.
Imagine earlier that day. My immediate family - Lee, two children - are crammed into the car, parked on the M1. It's busy. It's noisy. The entire rest of the world are also trying to make their way up the M1, but we've not far left to go. Every last inch of space is packed with suitcases, overnight bags, wellies, coats, warm hats, clinking plastic bags full of booze, boxes of food (WHAT IF WE RUN OUT OF STILTON, BETTER TAKE THREE SPARES), more booze, blankets, bedding, a gift-wrapped full-sized Brabantia kitchen bin (don't ask) and my son has not stopped talking for one hundred and three miles.
Further back still, packing the car that morning. As every good parent knows, the very first thing which must be packed in the boot, usually under cover of darkness but definitely while the children are arguing over who has to sit with the Brabantia bin across their body is the giant bag or bags full of presents. This way, you can create a geological strata of suitcases, bedding, clinking bags of booze and four giant stiltons over the top, and your children are none the wiser as they make screeching monkey noises all the way up to the Peak District. As an aside, I have fond memories of being an annoying dickhead in the back of my parents car, arguing with my brother taking up even one single inch of "my side", or the both of us prising my sleeping little sister's eyelids open to make her look 'like a zombie'. My children have escalated this sort of pettiness into an olympic sport. I still remember having to pull over and explain that in polite society, we are allowed to look out of any window in a car, not just the one on your own side, and even if someone was to look over out of 'your' window, it's still not really justification for punching them in the throat.
So far so normal. So let's go further back, somewhere around mid-November. From this point onwards, I've dedicated every spare minute to the kind of Christmas preparations that I am guessing many husbands simply do not realise need doing. Someone has to buy the presents, yes, but before this stage, someone also has to think about what presents to buy. Where to buy them. Rearrange schedules so as to be able to do this. Smuggle the contraband into the house without prying eyes discovering it. Buy wrapping paper. Buy sellotape. Buy sticky bows. Buy different wrapping paper, as you remember that your kids are old enough to spot if Santa's using the same stuff as those presents mummy is giving to daddy. Buy all the stilton. Leave yourself enough time to order the bespoke item your child has asked Santa for which actually doesn't exist unless you're prepared to wait for a slow boat from China to deliver your custom order. Feel relieved, when it arrives just in the nick of time. Buy christmas cards. Write christmas cards. Go out to buy stamps. Locate the addresses of your husband's distant relatives. Post half the cards and then leave a stack in the kitchen waiting for addresses which you will never locate. (See also: bin the cards on January 27th).
I did all this.
It was around midnight on Christmas Eve that we decided it was time for bed. Better get stuffing those stockings! we thought. Lee was dispatched out to the car to retrieve the two giant ikea bags I'd packed, one for each child. Alarm bells started ringing when he came in with one, then announced he was off to bed.
Where's the other bag? I asked, quite calm at this stage.
What other bag?
The other bag of presents? (breathe, breathe). You know? The other, giant, blue ikea bag full of presents for our tiny little son, who has counted down every last minute of today until Santa is going to come and bring him a real live tooth from a dinosaur which last roamed the earth 60 million years ago (Kidding. But this IS what he’s asked for this year. The tricky bastard.)
Well, what started as a whispered discussion quickly escalated to a full blown row. There were tears (mine). There were recriminations (his). There was a very heated discussion about the exact syntax I had used when I had checked whether Lee had 'got the bag(s) from the garage' when packing the car. There was utter disbelief on my part that he could possibly have picked up one giant bag full of wrapped presents and not noticed THE IDENTICAL BAG RIGHT NEXT TO IT, (one. bastard. job.) but seeing as it's Christmas, we're forever more going to go with Lee's version that I only told him to get 'the bag'. Anyway, the point was that in less than six hours the children would be prising our own eyelids open and every last one of our son's presents were a two hundred mile round trip away.
I'd been so busy alternately raging and weeping that it was a while before we all noticed that Lee was nowhere to be found. He'd sped off into the night, with the intention of driving all the way home, retrieving the presents, then breaking every natural law of physics and possibly the sound barrier to get back up to Derbyshire before the children woke up. I didn't sleep a wink until, somewhere around 6.45am he stumbled back in, we high-fived, I raced downstairs to stuff the presents into a stocking and jumped back into bed - and here I am not exaggerating one tiny bit when I say that literally seconds later, both children barged in, eyes shining, giddy with excitement and raring to go.
Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas.
It was weeks later we learned that Lee's demented 5am santa dash down the deserted M1 (because frankly, who else is driving anywhere at that time on Christmas morning?) had been clocked by no less than 4 speed cameras, adding festive insult to festive injury.
But, the official line remains. Lee saved Christmas. Let us never speak of this again.
The good stuff
Hmmm, feels like quite a while since I last wrote. Sorry. I’d like to say this was because I’ve been busy, but, well - I haven’t really. Here’s some amusing and good things I’ve been enjoying since the last time you heard from me…
This is the kind of tweet that you see once, and then think about at odd opportunities again and again for the rest of your natural life.
Also, this brilliant tutorial on how to draw an owl
Whilst we’re all on twitter, I did enjoy Borat and his message for voters in the USA prior to the election three billion years ago this week.
On that note, have you seen the new Borat film? I enjoyed the first one as something very of its time, and didn’t have huge expectations for the new release but have to say I enjoyed it enormously. It’s quite a strange (and obviously uncomfortable) watch, but I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first one. I found I watched it more in awe of how they’d actually pulled it off as a technical exercise rather than engaging with the story. Either way - I thought it was good. I was going to link to the trailer, but there’s WAY too many spoilers - don’t watch it. Just watch the film.
Seeing as one of the only things to do during lockdown is read books, I’m recommending that you buy and read Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. Full disclosure: there’s nothing funny about it, but my newsletter, my rules. It is such a captivating book, the way she writes is breathtakingly beautiful, and its up there for best book I’ve read this year. It made me cry actual big tears.
(Also off topic, but if books are your thing I’d also recommend Educated, by Tara Westover, and Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper - two memoirs about incredible women who have somehow, despite the odds, managed to disentangle themselves from nut-job religious cults. They’re both such intelligent books, full of hope and strength of spirit.)
I want to get a kitten. If you know any black and white kittens who want to move house, let me know. I was thinking about doing this fairly soon, until my friend Jenny pointed out what happens when you have a cat and also a Christmas tree, so I might hold off for a few weeks eh?…
Christmas Spirit
Now pubs are open again, this might not be so needed, but for the last couple of weeks, I instigated a village cocktail night with two other households of our mates nearby. Each house chooses and makes a cocktail one day, then delivers portions of the cocktail and/or the component parts and garnishes to the other households. We chose to do this in our childrens’ school drinks bottles for the added frisson of risk of them accidentally imbibing the five shots of spirits which make up a long island iced tea. (Fun fact: this actually did happen at Camp Bestival one year, when, having smuggled in a ‘water bottle’ full of vodka, a child took a full swig of it. Oops). You then do a zoom call and everyone gets the excitement of mystery cocktails, without having to shell out on a billion ingredients, or even put on trousers. Result.
I’ll leave you with this festive video. I might have shared it before, but it never fails to make me absolutely die laughing. Merry Christmas everyone!
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Who am I anyway?
I'm Lindsay. Bit of a dickhead, freelance writer for money, author of And Other Idiots and other internet shite for kicks. This newsletter will be a short story of some idiotic exploits from quite close to home, for no other reason than to make you smile every two weeks. Exactly how much shit can one man buy on Ebay? I intend to find out.
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You made me laugh out loud. Brilliant. Especially the bit about the eyeballs. Can't wait or the next one. x