Tits and Teeth Christmas

 November flies by in a flurry of stress and anticipatory anxiety. Diaries are filled, pages turned and as more people ask, “Could you just,” there is a  sense that there won’t even be time to breathe in December. Add to that the fact that my musicians are children, post-lockdown bugs are wreaking havoc on unpractised immune systems and people seem to have forgotten how to be nice and you are in twitchy-eye territory.

Then, before you know it, it’s the end of the month. Frosty breath. You’ve made the Christmas pud, done the first three concerts and had a mince pie. The Christmas jumpers come out of storage, you keep a set of sleigh bells in your handbag (just in case) and the weather gets colder and crisper. Hoops appear in the school hall. 

I don’t know if hoops are a universal primary school marker of Christmas but when I walked into the hall this morning and saw displays of tinsel clad PE hoops, masquerading as festive mobiles of children’s artwork, hanging from the ceiling the anxiety lifted and I blurted out, “Ooh, Christmas has started! Hoops! I’ve had a mince pie and I’m three concerts in.”

My colleague raised an eyebrow.

“Not for me. Not until December the first!”

That was when I explained the two Christmases of a musician. My Christmas- the one with family, tree decorating, present buying, wrapping and icing a Christmas cake with carols from Kings on the radio - starts when things calm down a bit, somewhere around the 17th. Until then, it’s the Tits and Teeth Christmas. Plaster on the smile and just keep going until it’s all done.

I have musician friends who hate Christmas. All that sticking your chest out and toothy grins spoil their family festivities.  Weirdly, I’m not one of them. In my years as a non-musician it was the Tits and Teeth Christmas I missed. My own Christmas was somehow poorer for not falling into it in an exhausted heap.

There is something to be said for pretending to have a great time. Fake it ‘till you make it. It works for over hyped religious festivals as well as general life.

Welcome to December. The month of teaching children who have legitimately had chocolate for breakfast.

Willy and Fanny

*warning - contains copious amounts of swearing*

 I haven’t written a blog since the new Prime Minister took over because it’s all too depressing. Maybe it’s just my usual November blues, which happens because I’m overwhelmed with what is coming up (never talk to a musician in November about whether they are excited for Christmas) but I suspect it’s more to do with people I like to call Willy and Fanny (or variations of those names)

Proportionally, I would say that there are more Willies than Fannies. 

I’m talking about those entitled people who believe that the sun, moon, stars and everyone else revolves around them. We have all come up against someone who is so obsessed with their own orbit they forget that you are a human being too. Those are the people I name. It helps me to shout a variation of Willy or Fanny and attach it to a perfectly ordinary object when I am alone, after I have been affected by one of these creatures. Lately, my life has been made just a little more uncomfortable by people like this.

This is a technique I learnt from Twitter, where obscenity used to be compulsorily. Now, the platform has been bought by a Willy. It seems highly appropriate that Twatter is now run by someone who build his own phallic spaceship and sends everyone running for the hills. 

A government that has been in power too long, run out of ideas, mismanaged a pandemic, crashed the economy and stirred up racism in an attempt to understand migration, is, obviously, completely staffed by Willies and Fannies. 

We have reached the state where there’s no one left, so they have to give jobs to those who have previously resigned for wrongdoing. None of them are making any sense at all.

This makes the Willy who had to resign but missed out on the handshake determined to make us love him some other way. I know that everyone is particularly cross with this particular Willy for spoiling their favourite show. I, however, think it’s a Machiavellian move of genius proportions. I don’t watch I’m a Celebrity. It’s not for me. I like nice things and absolutely hate it when people get pleasure out of other’s misfortune. Schadenfraude just makes me uncomfortable but I know that it’s very popular. So, on he goes, gets to publicly lie and be questioned by other celebrities who are also there to lie so that we will love them and the public watch in their thousands. Then they can phone in to make him eat snake anus (do snakes have anuses?). When he does so without complaint and with what seems like genuine warmth and humour then we will love him again and he will be the next Prime Minister. The answer, obviously, would be to not watch it (there are several good books I can recommend instead) but I know that you are not going to do that. You are going to watch, vote, tell everyone else. You will rant on social media, the regulated media will report your fury (because reporting what other people say is allowed), more people will watch and he will emerge as a shiny new Willy; polished and covered in glitter.

There’s nothing I can do to stop you.

Except I will gift you a list of words that you could shout at the telly instead.

Cocktrumpet, cuntpuffin, sinkdick, gophergonad, piepussy, forkpenis, blanketknob, bilbyhole, handcock.

“You absolute hand cock!”

Although, now that I’ve given you the secret you can make up your own and feel lalochezia, which the book I’m currently reading (Susie Dent’s Emotional Dictionary) says is the relief felt at swearing. 

Go on. Get a dose of lalochezia.