Two weeks ago it was all happening too early. Now, I’m panicking. We’ve had our first proper Christmas card – from Yvonne, with a picture of Jake looking adorable in a sparkly Santa coat – bearing the inscription, ‘We woof you a Merry Christmas’ (Jake, in case you need reminding, is a Yorkie who thinks he’s human; I assume he dictated the message) and I haven’t done any.
To be outstripped by a dog in the Christmas-card stakes is shaming. However, despite the paw prints in ours I happen to know that Yvonne did most of the work. When I phoned her the other day to inquire after her holiday in a helter-skelter (I had visions of her and Lindsay, my other neighbour, sliding all the way down to the front door on mats, but apparently it’s been sympathetically converted) she was sounding a bit tired.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
‘I’m writing Christmas cards,’ she said. ‘It’s taking all day.’
‘How many are you sending?’
‘Five hundred.’
I thought at first she was joking, but no. I told her it was her own fault for being so popular. (Yvonne has gained quite a following in this column; if I don’t give her a mention every now and then, people assume we’ve fallen out.)
Clearly I am not in the same league, since we’ve usually received quite a few cards by now and all we’ve had to date is the odd one from buyers on EBay. I’m not counting the one sent by the decorator; touched as I was, I would have preferred that four-month-old quote for the exterior paintwork. Nor the one from a PR woman I once worked with ten years ago (either I made a lasting impression or she sends them out by the truckload).
I assume the festive email I sent out last year is responsible for this. Telling people I was trying to have an environmentally friendly Christmas means they all probably went, ‘Great, one less to worry about’ and struck me off their list. Either that or they added ‘hair shirt’ under ‘presents’. Personally, I prefer the hemp ones. They’re less itchy.
This year I’ve bought cards made from recycled paper, so that my friends and family don’t think I’m a total Scrooge, and have kept up the eco theme by buying my father a carbon neutral pack. This is to make up for the CO2 emissions generated by their flight from France, where they now live – they are coming over for Christmas – and is in no way intended as a comment on their desertion of the grandchildren.
I was considering getting Mum the alpaca from Oxfam Unwrapped, but on top of the Dad’s present that might be overdoing it. There are only so many ethical gifts a person can receive without experiencing a slight anticlimax. Yvonne’s already got three goats from last Christmas; I suspect she’ll have an entire herd by the 25th . She says it gives her a warm, woolly feeling. They’ll be angoras, then.
I would like to buy recycled wrapping paper, but it costs a fortune. The Guardian’s designer wrapping paper – artsy newsprint without the gross-out headlines that you might, if you knew someone green enough, conceivably use – was a good idea (I got the Paula Rego and Mark Titchner) but Mum’s an Express reader.
Besides which, they like Constable prints. Wrapping her National Trust lavender neck warmer in a Turner Prize loser would not go down at all well. I suppose I could use the crossword page. If it’s got the sudoku on it too, she’ll be a happy bunny.
1.18am. Christmas is now officially here. Have just returned from a bop at York Brewery where lots of people wore glittery tops and the DJ played Slade and everyone tried to get Noddy Holder’s ‘It’s Christ-mas!’ screech in the right place and got it hopelessly wrong.
I wore my sequinned top, which only gets an airing at Christmas because it’s too full on for any other time of year. I would have worn the new sparkly top I got for £13.99, which was a bargain, I thought, until the sparkly bits adhered to my armpit making me look as if I had ghastly green – albeit twinkly – stubble.
Having watched Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen last Wednesday, it’s not just discos for which glitter is de rigueur. The gorgeous pouting Domestic Goddess dredges her Christmas cake in it, too, as well as edible gold stars and a hailstorm of gold and silver balls.
I’m thinking of trying Nigella’s version (it also has coffee beans on top and, sacrilegiously, no marzipan or icing) on Mum, who comes from the peaky-iced-winter-scene-with-snowman school. I suspect she’ll view edible green-and-red glitter as a danger to denture-wearers. Frankly, it’s all gone a bit Mark Titchner.