Holidays-a-coming, holidays-a-coming!

First of all, a point of note with regard to me saying ‘Happy Holidays’. I don’t actually wish anyone ‘Happy Holidays’. I would never say something so American. I have tried really hard to retain my NI brogue and sayings so ‘Happy Holidays’ just isn’t going to happen. But people in shops here say it with such intent and meaning (unlike at home when they say ‘Happy Christmas' with all the sincerity of…I don’t know…something really insincere - I always get the feeling they’re only saying it because their supervisor is watching) that I actually do believe they want me to have a good Christmas, so I usually say back to them ‘you too’.

Anyway as mentioned yesterday, since Jose’s Christmas party I have been more in the mood for Christmas. I now quite like seeing decorations up around the place. Our house though, remains like Scrooge’s. The Lake is like the town that Christmas built, a veritable Winter Wonderland with lights around windows, those funny lighted animal sculptures things and trees all lit up. We have nothing. Not even so much as a fake candle in a window (very popular here). It makes it look like no one even lives there. But there is absolutely no point in me buying any decorations, I won’t even be here for the big day and what would I do with them come January. I spend enough money on crap I don’t need thank you very much.

But my change in mood has meant I can even listen to at least a few songs on The Light before having to change to a CD. There is a Christmas song they play and I am telling you if that’s not Mark Owen singing then he should enter ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ and sing ‘Babe’. They wouldn’t even need to have the live final, he’d win from round one. He sounds exactly like him, exactly like him.

I felt a little at home when I heard ‘Saviour’s Day’. But I was gutted when I realised it wasn’t Cliff singing. Gutted I tell you. Cliff is as much a part of Christmas as eating until you need to carry your belly, overcrowded shops and stress as to what exactly you should buy your nearest and dearest. But I’ve yet to hear my all time favourite Cliff song (and probably my all time favourite Christmas song) his version of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ on the radio. I love it, especially the instrumental bit and the very end bit when he goes into ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. Thank goodness I downloaded it off Napster last year. No really, I did.