Happy New Year

It’s New year’s Eve and, once again, a time of traditions.  Traditions have changed over the years.  Once, you may have gone out to a pub, or to a succession of pubs, before pubs started ticketing people to allow them entrance to a public house, thereby sucking much of the joy out of a pub crawl in exchange for providing a sandwich platter of the sort more usually encountered at the more desperate kind of civic function, or siege.  Pub crawls on a New Year’s Eve have a special tension all of their own, as the perennial pub crawl dilemma of ‘should I stay put?  We have a table and the place is OKish.  But maybe we could be having a better time somewhere else?’ (a dilemma solved on all such occasions by having one more beer and then taking the decision) is amplified by the social pressure of starting New Year’s Eve by having a good time.  Having a good time is mandatory on New Year’s Eve, with a societal expectation of euphoria when the clock strikes midnight.

As New Year follows New Year, you might decide to go to small social gatherings on NYE, or to an organised event.  This will probably be at a golf club and will involve fireworks at midnight.  This is tremendous fun, even if you don’t get to let off the fireworks, drunk, yourself.  And they will restrain you if you try.

There will probably come a time when you have your first NYE either on your own or with your significant other, just the two of you together.  This is what ‘Hootenanny’ was invented for and why it keeps on being broadcast, year after sodding year.  Of course the best way to enjoy ‘Hootenanny’ is to open the first bottle early, send everyone you know a text about 10:30pm wishing them all the very best for the New Year, then go to bed.  Stir briefly about midnight when various neighbours and golf clubs set off their fireworks, drunk, then wake up in a new year.  Perfect.

Some people make resolutions for the new year and if you are the sort of person who needs to make a change to their life to improve it based on advice you read in a magazine with a glossy front cover showing somebody with improbably white teeth looking toned, then 1 January is probably a good time to start doing something, like going to the gym, or stop doing something, like eating the huge amounts of cheese and chocolate that have been a glorious eature of your diet since Christmas Eve.

In the spirit of making changes, it’s time to make a change to this blog.

Recently, the blog has comprised of two entries a week for most weeks, those entries being 700 words long.  This was largely, well, wholly, an experiment in determining if I could crank out the quantity of material that appears, on a regular basis, in the printed media, the sort of thing that this blog frequently takes aim at, with a trebuchet full of flaming badger shit.

This has led to a couple of conclusions.

The first is that 700 words is not enough to explore a subject.  That’s why many recent entries are just starting to get going when they stop.

One needs time to warm up to a full on rant, when the swearing come hot and fast and the indignation seethes from every phrase.

The other noticeable thing about this blog is that nobody reads it.  It’s all very well carefully crafting sly sentences for your own amusement, but this is too akin to mental masturbation, or the sort of behaviour that might be affected by a ‘talented’ ‘musician’ who has a keyboard, GarageBand and an awful lot of his compositions on CDs that he makes for himself and keeps on a special shelf in his bedroom.  In his mum’s house.

So, in 2015 G&P will go quarterly.  G&PQ sounds more like a company that operates ferries than a glossy magazine, so no scope for confusion in the Google results, and I am rather taken with the idea of the longer form blog entry.

Happy New Year everyone.

A Matter of Taste Mini Sauces

Gentleman’s Choice

Frankly, I find myself a little baffled at the proposition.  What, after all, is a ‘mini sauce’.  Sauces should, of course, be served in just the right quantity, from a sauce dispenser, usually a covered bowl, ornamental for preference and, if you are really doing things properly, originally serving some entirely different function.  The silver plated severed head of a sworn enemy used to be all the go in mess halls of yore, although these days polite society is apt to frown on such things, meaning that instead, no dinner table is complete without the head of some beast that one has slaughtered in a gamesmanlike fashion as a novelty sauce dispenser.  Vegitarianites may protest all they like, but a dollop of brown sauce on one’s kippers of a morning tastes so much better when dispensed from the silvered skull of that badger you killed with a snooker cue after it had gotten into the roses.  Red sauce is, of course, served from the skull of a fox.

Mustard is tricky, and to be respected.  Best kept in a simple scallop shell.

Those requiring French mustard are quite free to obtain it after first leaving the table, house, and country.

The novelty sauce dispenser is nothing new, in the 1970s no self respecting working class café, the sort of place that lorry drivers used to congregate for sandwiches and much tea to fortify themselves for the long drive ahead, was complete without a tomato sauce bottle shaped like a large tomato.

The point is, of course, that a small bowl, or selection of bowls, and corresponding spoons, are quite sufficient for any appetite.

The exception is, of course, to be found in hotels.

Is there anything quite so delightful as those wee jars of sauce that the room service chap, or even chapess, brings when delivering one a late supper?  The hospitality industry loves miniatures, from mini-bars to soaps the size of postage stamps.  In the right place, at the right time, the miniature sauce pot is not just perfectly acceptable, it is perfection.

Player’s Choice

 Right.  First things first.  There are two sauces, red and brown.  Or, if you are from the North, brown and red.  Sauces come in bottles.  They do not come in jars, nor poncy bowls.  They do not come in plastic packets that some, in a misguided attempt to introduce foreign language into the sauce debate in the false apprehension that foreign equals sophisticated or better, describe as ‘sachets’.  Plastic packets of sauce are an abomination and are fit for only one thing, to be discarded with contempt, or of course, much more likely, hoarded in a kitchen draw but never, ever, used.

Sauce comes in bottles.  It also comes out of bottles, if you shake really, really hard.

Surely there is no experience so beatific as a child as grasping an adult sized sauce bottle in two child sized hands and shaking it in the up and down motion of a crazed campanologist, only to be delivered of a puddle of sauce on your plate which was, of course, the objective all along.

Why bother with a spoon and a jar when one can, with experience, practice, and dedication to ones art, direct the jet of sauce under steady pressure from a plastic bottle with all the accuracy of a sauce sharpshooter.  Or with a well timed sequence of sharp spanks to the bottom of a bottle, distribute globs of goodness ‘pon the plate.  Yes, the bottle is the right receptacle.

Novelty dispensers have their place.  For the squishy plastic tomato that place was Wimpy and that time was 1978.  It was glorious but let us move on.  Sauce bottles in cafes should properly have a dried crust around the top of the bottle.  This is revolting, but nobody expects you to eat it so stop fucking moaning.

Finally, brands.  I have no time for brands, usually.  But occasionally there’s one that simply tastes like quality.  And since those bastards at HP started manufacturing their ‘sauce’ abroad, and so ruined it for everyone forever, there’s only one sauce that goes on my sausage sarnie.  ‘Daddies’.

The cafe keeps a bottle behind the counter for me.

Quality.

Christmas Traditions

Christmas is, traditionally, a time of traditions, both old and new.  It is possible, indeed desirable, to have new traditions and although social media can induce ultra short term nostalgia, may I suggest that we all agree that a tradition is based upon a length of time no shorter than an annual cycle.  Going to get your coffee from the same place every Sunday for a couple of months is not a tradition, it’s a habit, you addict.

You can certainly expand upon existing traditions.  My favourite Christmas traditions include switching off the television promptly as soon as the broadcast of ‘Carols from Kings’ begins, and enjoying ‘A Ghost Story for Christmas’ with a glass of port, just as the schoolboys in the charge of M R James used to do many Christmasses ago when he would invite them up to his rooms, give them alcohol and tell them disquieting stories.  Simpler, kinder, times.

If you are lucky enough to be spending Christmas with your family, you probably have your own traditions.  These can be the traditional ones of traditional games, like ‘Hunt the AAA Batteries’ or ‘Some Assembly Swearing’, they can also be ones that are unique to your nation, region, village, culture or indeed family.  Cherish especially the family traditions that appear so, so normal because everyone does them unthinkingly each year.  The first time you spend a Christmas in the company of another family is also the first time you realise that others might do stuff differently.  Surely it is a test of the manners of any gentleman not to scream ‘barbarians’ at anyone who does not stand for the start of The Queen, and who can forget that moment when you realised that a guest wasn’t joking about being a vegan and you hastily rinsed the duck fat roasted potatoes, beans, sprouts and carrots.

Walking into a room splashed with gore and remarking ‘you mean you don’t batter badgers on Christmas Day, but how do you keep down TB in this area, and what do you serve in butties later?’ might be unusual, but possibly no more so than rousing a guest early on Boxing Day and informing them they are about to hunt down and kill a fox, as is traditional in many villages and hamlets in England.  Fox hunting, on Boxing day or any other time of the year, never really took off in cities, which is a shame really because if there is one pest that needs controlled it’s an urban fox, and the sight of a pack of hounds and several dozen horses going full tilt through a pedestrianised city centre on the first day of the sales would I think we can all agree be unforgettable, no matter how much one subsequently tried.  A Christmas Day hunt is in and of itself a typically English tradition, it has everything the English love, it has posh people and posher ponies, it has dogs, it has a plucky underdog, well, underfox, and it has the voice of dissent in the form of hunt protestors.  All of whom probably meet up at a local country pub before the off, because no bugger is going to go tearing across the countryside and leap hedges when sober, that’s for sure.

The best traditions are, of course, the ones you make yourself.  Like making a Christmas playlist to drive to, ensuring that ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ is on what the radio folk like to call ‘heavy rotation’.

Of course, when creating a new tradition one should have a care, what if, years from now, your child spends their first Christmas with their loved one and their family and embarks on performing an action that has gone unremarked upon and unquestioned at home for years, ever since you first created that tradition.  Will it appear charming, or some weird shit that other folks will think one step away from a ritual?  If the latter, I recommend you go for it, traditions are mannerisms given legitimacy through longevity, no matter how weird.  Kissing under some mistletoe?  Try to invent that today, in the office, and explain it away as a charming festive idea you think will really catch on.

Crolling

Carolling, as distinct from wassailing which is like carolling only more fun because it involves cider, is a festive seasonal fixture of the Yuletide period, like new socks or being told by malicious kids in the playground that Father Christmas is really your dad.  A truly jaw dropping revelation because you thought your father worked in an office and if he is, in fact, Santa, then where the fuck is that new bike you’ve been lusting after for the last two years, and why are there not more reindeer milling about in the back garden, or on the roof?

Carolling is a seasonally appropriate activity.  If gangs of youths roamed the streets at any other time of the year, going from door to door and singing what are in effect folk songs, for money, then they would get abridged shrift.  Folk songs at other times of the year are anyway best confined to festivals where the seating is hay bales, or pub car parks where men who work in offices (secret Santas?) all week like to dress up in white, strap bells to their ankles, grab a stick and dance like nobody is watching.  Very much the case usually, as Morris dancing in a pub car park is the opposite of a fight in the same location, in that spectators rush from the car park to the security of the snug, rather than forming a circle round the protagonists and enjoying the only boxing that remains, literally, free to air.

The prospect of a group of children turning up on your doorstep January through November and giving an off-tune but spirited rendition of ‘Greensleeves’ before chapping the door and expecting a quid for their services is, thankfully, a remote one.  But come Christmas one can expect a small band of urchin singers to give an excellent demonstration of why their evenings are free at this time of year when any of their talented peers are practicing as choristers, through the medium of ‘song’.  A quid, or a bucket of water, are both ideal ways of dispersing the little darlings.

There are some who hold the opinion that ‘Christmas really starts’ when ‘Carols from Kings’ is broadcast by the BBC on Christmas Eve.  I can understand the attraction, a trinity of beloved establishments; the BBC, Christmas Eve, selective education, all coming together.  I myself consider that when ‘Carols from Kings’ comes on, it’s time to turn off the telly, make sure the sherry, mince pie and carrot are near the fireplace, and then go to bed to get in that all important one more sleep ‘till Christmas and, with any luck, a new Action Man.

Carolling starts a lot earlier than Christmas Eve, from about mid-December arrival at, or departure from, many a train station is enlivened by the sound of a group carolling for charity, be they singing or blowing enthusiastically into brass objects.  And it’s not just terminals.  Every Christmas for the last few years I’ve alighted at my local station, the sort of place where people stepping off the train are greeted by a spooky stationmaster who informs them that no train has stopped here for decades, to be confronted by Brownies singing ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ and ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem’.  Sometimes simultaneously.

All for a good cause and, it has to be remarked, tremendously festive.

Christmas marks the time when one puts together a Christmas playlist.  Usually exactly the same as the one from last year, possibly reordered a bit, possibly with a new song added provided it meets the Christmas song requirements of sleighbells making an appearance somewhere.

‘Classical Christmas’ is a separate playlist consisting of songs from that CD you got free with a bottle of port a few years ago, and songs from that CD you bought in a moment of weakness because you thought it would be classy to decorate the tree to something festive that doesn’t feature an electric guitar, and which permits you to consider yourself ‘cultured’.

There may also be a CD of carols sung by a classical singer cashing in, featuring an album cover with her, or possibly him, in a frock with a plunging neckline.

Christmas Coffee Cups

A few posts ago, I was ranting about coffee cups and Christmas as a marketing ploy.  Thinking about it, it’s only natural that coffee shops should have seasonal cups.  They’ve been trying to personalise the coffee experience, just like the cola companies have been trying to, and so no wonder that they changed the design of their beverage containers to make us think ‘ahhh, lovely, let me guzzle this and go out and buy another, this is fun!’.

It does lead me to wonder why the hell aren’t these people making a bit more of an effort during the rest of the year.  Christmas is not the main Christian holiday, Easter is, and so why don’t we have special; designs for Easter.  Or for other seasons or holiday, God knows the shops seem pretty bloody keen to sell us stuff related to Halloween, why not cups and cola cans too.  (Honourable exception here, Krispy Kreme, they make one hell of an effort.  I don’t know what’s in that orange icing they use, but it’s practically a legal high).

Given the drive for personalisation of your gulping experience by cola companies and coffee shops alike it is unsurprising that they seek to make the experience special with a seasonally decorated beverage holder.

Gentleman & Player’s favourite though is, you will be unsurprised to learn, the Waitrose coffee cup.

Let’s pause for a second to consider the Waitrose beverage.  If you have a ‘My Waitrose’ card (which is one of those customer loyalty cards that allows, depending on your point of view, either you to get reward points and vouchers and special offers or for the store to build up a profile of you based on your shopping meaning they know what you eat, what you drink, when you go on holiday, what birth control you use, when you menstruate, and can sell all this to, in ascending order of dreadfulness, other companies, foreign powers or Our Own Government!) you can get a free tea or coffee every day.  The idea is of course that you go in there thinking ‘just a free coffee, just a free coffee’, start getting your coffee, think ‘must…be…strong’ and then exit with at the very least a pastry and more likely a 42 inch telly.  Such is the acknowledged power of going to the shops for a bottle of HP sauce and coming back with an HP printer.

The Waitrose seasonal coffee cup is…it’s…well…it’s very Waitrose.  It’s a white reindeer and seasonal scene on a green background.

Two things.

Firstly, tradition.  Apparently, before the evil elves at the marketing department of a certain cola company got busy, the traditional colours of Christmas were green and white, not red and white.  This makes sense, as we have green Christmas trees in the house and the only red traditionally on offer is the breast of a robin and the claret spilled during the traditional family punch up (always after the Queen’s Speech, we’re not savages).

Secondly, it’s just so very classy and understated.

But surely they can do more.  Costa have four different characters, with the occasional variation, Waitrose can turn a cup into a collectable.

Obviously, a simple red dot on the snout of the animal turns a random reindeer into a beloved character.

A tartan bow, and we have a wee ‘Monarch of the Glen’ moment.

For our American Friends, who think nature is best admired when mounted on the wall of their double-wide trailer, a cross hairs on the forehead.  Actually, that’s the Scottish stalking method, if it’s an American, it’ll be a green haze and a line of print along the bottom that reads ‘cluster bomb option selected’.

I actually rather liked the Waitrose coffee cup.  Possibly because it was full of free coffee but probably because it was astatically pleasing.  The reindeer in question actually looked quite jolly, the green (Waitrose corporate colour though it was) was understated but festive, and appropriate, it was the sort of green you might encounter in nature.  Possibly in woods where fir trees grow.  Possibly at night, armed with a hacksaw, I couldn’t possibly comment.

Forecourt Forage

I recall, more fondly than a Frenchman dunking a poncy biscuit into a weak, Gallic, beverage, childhood car trips up to Scotland to visit family.  This would involve a long drive from the Wild West Midlands through Birmingham, a stage of the journey that took us on a section of elevated motorway through a city of tower blocks, like Mega City One but without the glamour, and with Brummies instead of Muties,

The journey was broken by two pit stops, both at motorway service stations.  The first stop was at a motorway service station that was probably just north of Birmingham but could have been anywhere in England back then, a classic 1970s (oxymoron alert) boxy affair on each side of the motorway, linked with a bridge spanning the traffic.  Facilities were duplicated on both sides of the highway, an early example of cloning and so the bridge was either an unnecessary architectural flourish or a meeting place for intelligence officers, or both.  I couldn’t pick it out of a line up today but I could, I think, identify it by smell; classic leaded petrol, diesel fumes and warm tarmac.

I have no idea what the catering and dining facilities at this place were like, according to nostalgia sites on the inter web they were famously awful, because we always took a packed lunch.  This consisted of cheese sandwiches, cheddar on white bread, augmented if you were a child by adding salt and vinegar flavoured crisps on top of the cheese.  This early example of fusion cuisine tasted divine and to this day I think a cheese sandwich lacks something if it does not crunch when eaten.

This was paired with Thermos Tea.  Thermos Tea is distinct from tea from a Thermos.  Tea from a Thermos could be boiling water from one Thermos, tea bags added separately, milk added from another Thermos.  Thermos Tea is tea first brewed in a pot, then poured with milk into a single Thermos flask to provide a brew with that particular tang, especially if served from a Thermos that has been well seasoned.

The one facility patronised was the loo.

The next stop was in the Borders I think.  I don’t recall much about this service station, beyond it being surrounded by scenery that was so jaw droppingly spectacular that these days the hills would be crawling with location scouts for fantasy epics.  The hills, I recall, were always topped with mist, so presumably we were across the Scottish border by this point.  This is usually where more Tea was taken for the final push to Glasgow.  Tea which had now been maturing for some five hours and was probably the beverage equivalent of crack.  It was also here where the facilities were used, and I would usually be the beneficiary of the service station shop, a book bought to keep me quiet for the remainder of the journey.

We probably also used the loo here.

I should say that while service stations are all very well, I remain a devotee of the roadside cafe, a caravan located in a layby where a hungry trucker can get a bacon buttie, a cup of tea in a non-biodegradable cup, and a hand job from a tranny, and still have change from a fiver.

Garages, back in the day, used to sell three things; fuel, oil, porn.

Today, things have changed somewhat, although roadside cafes remain a bastion of tradition.

Motorway service stations have followed the airport terminal model and become, essentially, out of town shopping centres with a petrol pump attached, and you have to look bloody hard to find the petrol pumps, and when you do there’s probably a Costa outlet there as well.  As well as what is essentially a food court offering many varieties of fried snack, there are mini-supermarkets on site that would not disgrace an upmarket camp site.

Garages have changed too.  You can still by fuel and wine gums, but the porn has been replaced by ‘Hello’ and many garages now come with the obligatory mini-mart attached.  One near me has an M&S outlet.  That’s right, the poshest place to buy groceries near me is the local garage.

A sobering thought

Christmas is a time of traditions both old and new.  It’s a time of traditions that seem ancient but are actually relatively modern, being that Victoria and Albert essentially invented the modern Christmas, she by having an enormous family to avoid over the Yule period, he by importing Tutonic ideas such as having a Christmas tree indoors instead of in the forest, wood or local car park being sold by Scouts, although thinking about it that last example may be a modern thing.

The idea of a winter celebration of some kind is an ancient one, the idea of a celebration of the birth of Christ is, if not ancient, then at least old rather than antique or vintage.

The practice of panic buying groceries as if you were preparing for a long sea voyage, or stocking your bunker in the event of an apocalypse, just because the shops are closed for one single sodding day, is very much a modern phenomenon.  Not for nothing do Ocado charge customers for Christmas delivery slots, they need the money to pay for all the extra deliveries they have to do, as the entire contents of one van now equates to one delivery.

I rather enjoy Christmas grocery shopping.  It’s pleasant to plan a menu and, for somebody who has the notion that ‘food is love’ as firmly embedded in their mangled excuse for a psyche as I have, buying many nuts for people to enjoy is the closest thing to a public display of affection my repressed self is likely to get.

There are things that one buys only at this time of year, specifically to consume over the festive period.  Not just Brussels sprouts (brussel?  Brussels sounds odd.  No, it’s Brussels, I looked it up.  But they grow those things all over, shouldn’t it be like Champagne and cheese and pork pies and kippers and so on, you can only call a thing a thing if it’s produced in a specific location, like real porn only comes from the Netherlands?  No matter.) and turkey, which if they were tasty we’d all year round, but nuts that require cracking, dates, and fancy cheese.  I love buying a cheeseboard for Christmas.  It’s the one thing you unwrap knowing there won’t be a disappointment.  Cheese is so versatile, you can snack on it at any time, and you can pair it with other festive treats, like pickles, and booze.

The Christmas booze shop is a thing of wonder.  This is when you pair not booze with food, but booze with the company you will be keeping over Christmas.  Planning is essential.

You need to think of others at Christmas.  Specifically, for the purposes of this exercise, you need to think of giving them booze and keeping on giving them booze to make sure that if they are good company they become great company, and if they are poor company they are practically sedated.  Why do you think booze was free for so long on long haul flights?  Passengers are a lot easier to deal with when they are happy or sleepy, or both.  This is the time of year when you buy strong continental lager, brewed under license on an industrial estate in Milton Keynes, in cans, just to keep your student age relatives and adult friends and relations who should know better happy.  It’s the time of year when you buy port, because old ladies like it an you do too, especially when paired with cheese or with reading an M R James story on Christmas Eve.

It’s the time of year when you pick up a bottle of advocaat, think better of it and then replace it.  It’s the time of year when you think about buying a mulled wine kit before wisely recognising that if you want a warm beverage at Christmas, a cuppa will do.

It’s the time of year when your shopping bags can clink on the way to the car and nobody judges you.  Make the most of it.

Enjoy, this is the time of year when it is acceptable to pop a cork at breakfast and traditional to mix with spirits even if your name isn’t Scrooge.

Tits Oot

Breasts, and womens’ breasts in particular, are once again the subject of vigerous, if not mass, debate.  Let’s be frank, there is a section of society where womens’ breasts are frequently a matter of debate, that section of society being males.  The question that has arisen recently though is not so much concerning breasts, but what is attached to them.  In short, breastfeeding.

If the question is ‘when is breastfeeding appropriate?’ then the answer is ‘whenever there is a hungry infant and a nursing mother’.

Simply put, and there’s no denying it, infants are poor at preparing their own food.  Give a newborn a can opener and a tin of tuna and they will be completely unable to open the can.  Utterly useless.  And they are no better with pouches or jars, or bottles, whether screw top or cork.

Breastfeeding is an excellent idea, not least because the mother deals with the removal of any packaging before commencing feeding, even on the bus.

However, some are not in agreement.

There is, for instance, discussion about breastfeeding in the workplace.  An interesting conversation to be sure, but surely the conversation should be about infants in the workplace?

There may be workplaces where it is not a huge distraction introducing the baby into the environment, for instance a crèche.  I can think of few others.  Just as playing death metal at ear shattering volume is not conducive to a productive day so an infant, even a well behaved one, is a disruption.  This is based on my experience of children on public transport, where one can be sat in a train carriage, oblivious to a whelp of mass distraction, until it goes off.  This is normally a noise far out of proportion with the size of the being generating it, more akin to some sort of city wide early warning system than a simple signal of hunger, or pooping.

While infants are possibly not suitable for the workplace, for instance on an oil rig or aircraft flight deck, breastfeeding of an infant in the workplace should not be an issue, and anyone thinking it offensive is invited to look at their fucking work and not the chest of their colleague.  Breasts are, of course, appropriate in the workplace, especially if that workplace has a name concluding with ‘Club’ or ‘A Go Go’.

There was also recently discussion about whether breastfeeding is appropriate in restaurants.

Once again, the question might more simply be are infants acceptable in restaurants?  The answer is ‘not near me’ but I concede that there are many, many restaurants that I do not patronise on a regular basis, in fact that’s the vast majority of them, so let’s take a more general view.

What, really, can be the objection?  Is the patron concerned that a punter is getting a free meal?  I hardly think that an infant having a feed is quite the same as some chancer rocking up, ordering a glass of tap water, then proceeding to unpack several cool bags and decant various thermoses while uncorking a few bottles they have brought, of home brew to neatly complete the example.  Will it offend other diners?  Again, what are those other diners doing looking at the chest of somebody at a different table?  I may not be an expert on etiquette, but even I know that staring at the breasts of a woman at another table has three likely outcomes, the first is your girlfriend storming out of the restaurant after catching you ogling, possibly covering you in today’s special as she goes.  The second is the lady’s dining partner thumping you, probably while your girlfriend holds you down, the third is a restraining order coupled with a lifetime ban from the entire chain, and that’s a long time to go without KFC.

Anyone who has seen breastfeeding will know that you don’t actually see breast, just the back of a baby’s head.  So what’s the objection?

The sooner children learn how to behave in a restaurant the better.  Of course, an infant can’t send a boob back, but they can learn at an early age that dining with family is one of the great pleasures in life.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

If you needed reminding that the festive season is upon us, you need look no further than your beverage cup.  Cola companies, of course, have a long tradition of festive cans, one even going as far as to adopt the festive colours of red and white as a permanent design feature of their cans (although there is a story that the red and white we now associate with Christmas is in fact a result of that particular cola company imposing their company colour scheme on the season.  Frankly, although the idea is cynical, it’s believable as, asked the questions ‘do you believe in Father Christmas?’ and ‘do you believe those bastards in marketing would even try to hi-jack Christmas for their own evil ends?’, I know which of the two I would be more confident in answering in the affirmative.  Having said that, if a cola company was responsible for the clothing colours of any character beloved of children, then, given the sugar content of the stuff they peddle, I’d of thought the tooth fairy would be a better example).

Cola cans now come in festive designs and, if you like that sort if thing, it’s all very jolly.  Ho Ho Ho.

But the fun doesn’t stop with a tin can.  Coffee cups now come with Christmas characters on them.  Costa are an excellent example of this, with four different designs of paper beaker, a snowman, a reindeer, an elf I think and, possibly, Santa.  Given the design limitations of a receptacle that, to be at all useful, has to have a rather abrupt straight edge to the top, they all look like beloved characters that have been in an industrial accident, but they are sort of jolly all the same.

Naturally, as soon as I saw them, I wanted to ‘collect the set’.  Be advised, drinking four cups of coffee in one day is sensational for productivity, next to useless for producing anything of worth.  You may well be typing like a demon, but the word ‘wheeeeeeeeee’, with another 274 ‘ees’ is not, as I soon discovered, acceptable content for an e mail or text.  At least not on its own.

In case you are wondering, coffee saturation is not best dealt with by drinking alcohol in a classic ‘you give a drunk guy coffee, so it’s best to give an over-stimulated fellow booze, right?’.  That’s the sort of idea you have after your forth store-bought latte.  I discovered.  It doesn’t work.

Elsewhere, the commercial signs of Christmas are everywhere.  The worse thing about them…they work.

Day to day, I have very little interest in port.  If I am at a restaurant and am having the cheese board, I’ll probably order a glass because a socially acceptable way to drink fortified wine and gives you the necessary courage to try the stilton brooding thuggishly and untouched at the end of the slate of cheeses that these bloody people insist you eat from left to right.  However, wandering down the ‘seasonal’ aisle of the supermarket at Christmas (in effect, the entire shop), if I see a half bottle, boxed with a cheese knife and a cheese board, I want it.  I don’t need it, I don’t particularly like it, but I want it.

The same goes for whisky.  I feel manipulated, I should not be thinking ‘must…have…scotch’ just because it comes packaged with a couple of engraved glasses.

In days of yore, Christmas was heralded by perfume adverts on telly (switching, at 5:30 on Christmas Eve, to holiday adverts, because in yore, Dads earned the money and had to be told how to spend it), now, it’s the same stuff you walk past every day, in a new box, that lets you know that the season of peace and goodwill to all men, and especially consumers, is upon us.