Santa Corpse, Inflata Claus and mmmmmmmn.....cake part III

Hello - it's Christmas Eve and this is a special festive edition of Provincial Princess. In other words I have a large glass of Baileys and a big chunk of Momma Charming's christmas cake to enjoy while I type (no marzipan, unfortunately, because Prince Charming doesn't like it, the freak).
Well, it is Christmas and of course it's a well-known scientific fact that anything consumed while there's a tree in your living room doesn't make you fat.
It's been a bit of a last-minute rush here at Chateau Provincial; I'd like to say that it's because of us being such interesting people that we couldn't find time to do the shopping in between a round of fabulous parties where I got to wear lots of spangly dresses like the kind they always have in the fashion pages of the December issues of women's magazines ("sparkle your way through the party season for under £50", you know the kind of thing). But guess what. Actually I've been bloody ill for weeks and PC's been visiting his folks.
The thing that really rankles is that we actually DID have a Christmas party to go to on Wednesday night, which, like, never happens, because whatever they tell you in the magazines, apart from possibly one office piss-up, no one except journalists on women's magazines really has a round of parties to go to where the dress code is formal and people actually intend to stay sober enough to risk wearing a sparkly frock.
But for once we did have a party to go to, with the chance to make lots of lovely new friends, and I had a new pair of fluffy boots and some new earrings to wear - boots £20 from Ebay, earrings £3 from a stall outside the Bristol City Museum. So as you can imagine I was like totally stoked to the max, dude (the person we were going to the party with is a surf instructor, so thought I'd get into the spirit of things there, lingo-wise).
Sadly, though, I was struck down by another flare-up of this horrible lurgy I've had for weeks. You probably know someone who's had it, too, as it seems to be going around: I keep getting flu for a few days, and then feeling better, but as soon as I leave the house I get ill again and have to go back to bed with 15 boxes of Kleenex Balsam and a hot water bottle. Last time, I had such a blinding headache I couldn't even read the National Enquirer, so I couldn't find out how Britney's coping with the miscarriage she hasn't had and what Beyonce would be doing if Jay-Z had been unfaithful, which of course he hasn't, but if he had, well, she'd be heartbroken because she's really fallen for him, say close pals, and let's hope it doesn't turn out to be another Whitney/Bobby thing.
So PC set out on Wednesday night at 7.30 on his own - and eventually came home at 4 o'clock the next afternoon, having had a brilliant time while I'd been losing half my body weight in snot.
So he's been Useless Simon since then, nursing a few extraneous emotions, but luckily, Superwoman that I am, I'd already done most of the Christmas shopping in a brief moment of convalescence on Tuesday night. I got really organised and went to Asda at 10.30 pm to miss the crowds; I'd have gone even later but for some reason, our normally 24-hour Asda decided to close at midnight in the busiest week of the year. Evidently the Wal-Mart family needed to get the kids to bed early or something.
I managed to spend £120 even though I was determined to be frugal, but really, that five quid Cava is so minging, you've got to get the Lanson haven't you. And also there was a much-reduced choice on the shelves at that time of night - again, the concept of Christmas being the busiest time of year for supermarkets seemed to have passed by the Wal-Mart family; I had to run round the vegetable section grabbing things as they were being tidied away, at only 11pm, so I couldn't get the Value potatoes and had to get the posh ones (I sense a marketing ploy). So much for Julie Walters "going hands-free". And they were re-stocking the shelves already so you had to squeeze your trolley past big pallet-loads of washing powder and stuff, which seemed a bit unecessary since they were going to be closed for six hours. Now I know why my mum used to take the time to make her own christmas pudding.
Anyway I got it all and on the way home I took a little detour around the estates to look at the lights on the houses. I'm a big fan of outdoor Christmas lights - I don't have any myself because I can't afford them, what with the Asda Super Special Real Brandy Whole Lotta Nuts! Christmas Pudding-style Giant Desert (Serves 12) that I had to buy because there weren't any of the small ones left, but I do like them on other people's houses.
Call me a chav if you think it's acceptable to mock the working class for having tastes different to those of more priviledged people, but I think when it's getting dark at half past three, a few flashing reindeers brightens the place up a bit.
The fashion this year seems to be for snake lights that spell out "Merry Christmas" which is very festive. There were some rather dodgy ones though, including a couple of people who had large Santas hanging on ropes out of windows that were blowing around in the wind in a manner a little too reminiscent of corpses dangling from gallows. Or how I imagine a corpse would look hanging from a gallow, I've never actually seen one. And someone else had a really odd Santa-in-a-box thing going on on their garage roof, which looked like a bloke in a red coat was burgling their house.
But the clear winner had to be the 15-foot-high inflatable Father Christmas in someone's garden. They had a big hedge, rather incongruously as it suggested they enjoyed their privacy, which would seem something of a contrast with drawing attention to yourself with a fucking great big blow-up Santa. Still, it cheered me up no end after the shopping nightmare.
So hoorah to them. You don't get that kind of thing in Stoke Newington, that's for sure. Merry Christmas everyone, and remember: if you feel sick, just eat a few segments of satsuma, and you'll soon find you can fit in another mince pie. Hoorah!