almost witty

popjustice reviews the new Pet Shop Boys album. Not due out till April 2006.

I’d say more but I’ve got more deadlines swimming past me than an ocean full of fish. So laterz - and if I don’t see you before, merry Christmas, happy new 2006 and I’ll see you in mid January. Unless Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong and avian flu don’t get to me first.

I had to head into town to do a little last-minute Christmas shopping (with my hectic schedule this week, today was actually the last lunchtime I realistically had to pick up last-minute bits and pieces).

So thus, while I was carrying my pack of toilet paper across the city centre, really annoying sales people kept interrupting my path. People selling The Big Issue. People selling gift-wrapping paper. Chavs selling mistletoe. Evil market traders pushing plush toys on little kids while their despairing parents struggled to figure out how they were going to pay for it.

But the worst of the lot has to be the watch sellers. There they are, standing on street corners, hawking their wares. Why? I defy you to find anyone who doesn’t already have a watch. You only have one wrist, one time zone. Why would you need more than one watch?

You know your nearest and dearest are really struggling for present ideas when they end up giving you a watch from a market trader for Christmas. Or perfume or aftershave, for that matter.

Then again, I find myself every year giving books, CDs or DVDs to the people I love and my friends. And every time, those books/CDs/DVDs tend to sit there, unused, unwatched, unloved. I think I need to broaden my gift-giving horizon next year. If I can afford to.

Sorry to go on about this, but I really think it’d be better all round if we all postponed Christmas. Just by a week or so, just to give me a little more time.

The washing-up has been piling up alongside the laundry, simply because I need to get the international Christmas cards and presents out by Monday and get most of my family presents out of the way by Saturday.

My impending sense of panic and doom is, however, not helped by the terrible Christmas music that the shops and supermarkets are inflicting on my poor ears in an attempt to get me into the festive spirit.

Wizzard’s bloody cliched Christmas song kept stalking me the other day down the high street as I went into shop after shop in a vain attempt to find a suitable present. And then on the drive home, it came on again - from a caller who wanted that song instead of a sweet Christmas carol. Which is at least more calming after a long hour spent gazing at things that nobody could possibly want. Anyone who wishes it could be Christmas every day needs their bloody head examined.

In the meantime, VH1 are asking for your favourite Christmas song. Please let it be the superlative Fairytale of New York (being re-released this Christmas apparently). Let it be Dear Jessie. Let it be Always On My Mind. Let it be anything but that bloody Slade song.

I give you this screen-grab without comment. Maybe just in case I get libelled. But this story might help.

Incidentally, I was at Cardiff Central station one late Friday night, and literally walked past David Davis, looking very regal with just one aide of some sort, patiently waiting for something or other. No other security detail, as far as I could see. I said good luck to him, and thereby gave him the kiss of death. Cunning, that.

And so the Christmas (when I say Christmas, I mean any ol’ secular occasion at the end of the year for food, drink, present-swapping and light-gazing as opposed to worshipping any particular deity) madness has begun again.

Friends of mine have mentioned that they’re getting stressed out by Christmas. To which I have blithely maintained that if you’re getting stressed out by Christmas, then you’ve lost the point of it all and, really, you ought to do your shopping online and relax. Which is my plan.

However, the plan does come a cropper when you find yourself starving, surrounded by food at Sainsburys on a Monday evening but you don’t have the time to stop for a cup of coffee because you have to get most of your family’s presents sorted by the weekend, the shop closes in 30 minutes and you have three other stores you need to go to. Not to mention the ethical dilemma of which charity Christmas cards to buy, whether your sisters will compare them to each other (of course they will!). And then your sister calls you when you’re at the checkout and blithely mentions that the other sister would definitely not like the Baileys and two-glass set you’ve just seen go past the checkout person.

Then you get home (eventually) and see emails from your other sisters saying that they’d prefer cash - which, to be honest, totally defeats the point of present-buying if you ask me.

Still, the first Christmas card of the year has already arrived on my doorstep - thanks Katy!

Now does anyone have any ideas for presents for women aged around 30, men aged around 30, men aged around 60 and women aged around 60?

Oh, and it’s not too late to join the UK’s Secret Santa 2005 !