CHRISTMAS is very near, which means you’ll end up being forced into at least one of these hideous activities this week:
Ice skating
Want to demonstrate your numerous physical shortcomings to a crowd of laughing strangers? Then go to your local pop-up ice skating rink. Or maybe just watch from the side, otherwise you risk partaking in that other terrible winter activity: a 36-hour wait in A&E.
Visiting a reindeer farm
Enjoy getting up at 6.30am to drive your kids 150 miles to see a depressed Arctic animal trapped on a dodgy-looking farm in Essex, taking a dump near a Christmas tree. The children are traumatised by how sad Rudolph looks and how lonely he is without any other animal friends, and need to be placated with Haribo all the way home.
Christmas market
If you enjoy buying horribly expensive hot dogs from grumpy migrant workers in wooden huts then eating them in drizzle, you’ll love a Christmas market. After consuming your suspicious sausage, you can trail around browsing overpriced, useless tat before one of your kids needs a piss and you realise there are no bathroom facilities in this twee hellhole.
Visit to Santa’s grotto
In your imagination, your child will be overawed by the special magic of being in the presence of Santa. In reality, they will be puzzled as to why you’ve taken them to meet a pensioner wearing a red suit in a gazebo in a Dobbies car park, rather than the North Pole.
Going to the panto
What’s Christmas for if not spending north of £100 on tickets for you and your family to see a former Emmerdale cast member shout innuendo and puns for two hours, accompanied by awful Christmassy versions of recent pop songs? At least the theatre will have a bar, where you can begrudgingly spend £8 on a pint to numb the pain.
