Festive

Alright, so I've had a little holiday. Nothing exotic, just a week where I ate myself, fairly comfortably, into a coma. And, not that I need to say it, Ho Ho Ho.

Over the Christmas period I spent an awful lot of time eating. In some capacity we all do. This is the one truth that most people accept once Christmas is over: 'I should have eaten less! If I'd have eaten less I'd still be looking closer to Kate Moss and less like Lilly Allen.'

But let me tell you something: That feeling one gets when the roast potato, coated in gravy, hits the roof of your mouth is pretty much an orgasm, if cooked correctly, in itself. That taste of tender crunchy sprouts, of moist roasted turkey, makes this meal worth every ounce of misery we go through in the week following.

Alas, tell yourself it's Christmas. If you don't enjoy yourself now, you probably never will.

Most families have a Christmas film don't they? A film they watch with the family, the fire blazing in the living room, the box of Thorntons gracing the old mahogany table. Most families watch films like 'Oh what a Wonderful Life', or, dare I say it, The Sound of Music'. Not us. This year, we replaced Octopussy with Titanic. THAT was our family film. The tale of a sinking ship, of love between the lower and upper classes. Of a man freezing to death in the Atlantic whilst his lover lies on a broken shelf, which, I'm convinced, would have fit them both had she only moved up a little.

And then, as it's Christmas, we act it out. The family and I. The hitting of the iceberg, the 'dance of commoners' that takes place in the lower deck, and of course, perhaps most importantly, 'Jack, Jack...don't leave me Jack'. Me being me, I prefer to lay on the leather sofa and tell one of my cousins to 'paint me like one of your french girls, wearing this and only this'. Alas, my cousin is no artist.

And then there's all the alcohol. Mulled wine, red wine, any wine. Sherry, Brandy, Gin, Whiskey. All of a sudden, every alcoholic spirit appears festive and fit for the occasion.

My Christmas Shocker occured when I learnt that my brother, in a drunken fit at uni, stripped down completely on stage at a club earlier this year. He seemed to remember a lot of what happened mind. How people were cheering him on and shaking his hand. At the moment he told me, my desire to cry took a full twenty minutes to simmer. It was then that I realised that in fact, we were all stupid on occasion. That he was in fact having the good time at uni that I'd never really had. That we were all sexual beings. Although, the thought of your sibling doing anything that involves their privates parts is something I'd rather deal with when drunken enough to forget about it. When he told me, my cousins and I were sitting in a Shisha Cafe smoking a wild berry and mint flavoured Shisha and (me) eating a slice of overpriced strawberry cheesecake.

'When I get drunk' I declared, for no particular reason, 'I start to giggle at everything and anything. I'm not the only one however, and I've come to realise that I'd much rather be a laugher than one of those people who cries over a playground breakup every time the gin gets a little too much.

And as the alcohol wears off, people face the reality of what they've done. You know, shoving their hand down the secretary's panties during the Christmas party, or going in for a whisper but instead licking the Secretary's ear dry. Or, if you're female, coming to terms with the tit-flash that you gave to the boys over in Accounts. And then there's the sex. How many people who work together will have, by now, have slept together? Far too many to count. I use the word slept lightly. Some people do it standing up, others, legs perched into the sky, torso thrust into the air. And some people just can't remember exactly how it all happened.

All in all it's been a good week off. Doing very little, relaxing and finding that, given the chance, I could sleep far more than I'd ever imagined.

On the relationship front - it's been as dry as a baron dessert without a well. Whenever I come oop north, that's part of the deal. My sordid sex life is something that stays well and truly down south. Up here, it's all about the family, isn't it? Isn't that what Christmas is all about?

That and receiving an awful lot of money with which to buy cock rings on my return.

I wonder - how wrong is it to spend Christmas money on something the donor would have a heart attack over? Is any right to the money lost once the envelop passes hands?