Is It Just Me? (22 page)

My family’s Christmas Day begins in a deceptively relaxed fashion. First thing in the morning, we’re very chilled. We’re all in our pyjamas for longer than usual (except sad cousin Billy, who hasn’t worked for a year and spends most days in his pyjamas, but we’re not talking about that). We’re in front of the fire. It’s lovely. We’re all opening our stockings, which is fun because our stockings are filled with silly, jokey things, like miniature desk hoovers, chocolate coins, cat pencil sharpeners and pleasant light reading matter like, well, like this book. (Did you get this book in your stocking, MDRC? If you did, let’s put our hands together now and offer a hearty hooray for Father Christmas.)

At this point, The Mother is in a good mood. She’s wearing her Christmas-morning silk dressing gown and sipping an Earl Grey from her best Wedgwood Christmas range cup. She’s enjoyed her stocking. It’s an idyllic Christmas scene. The cat is playing with a bauble on the lower branch of the tree (is there a more heartening sight?); Dad has put his tie-of-tinsel on (every year – yes, we never tire); Little Sis is sporting the fluffy bear slippers she’s just been given (they are, of course – because it’s Christmas – the funniest thing we’ve ever seen); Great Aunty June has finally worked out what to press so that her socks play a tinny, sock version of ‘Jingle Bells’, and she’s doing an amusing dance; cousin Yvette has got a sticker rosette from a present stuck in her hair and it has to be cut out – we’ll dine out on that one for a year; and I’ve got to the bottom of my stocking to discover the hallowed satsuma and we all go, ‘Aaaah, satsuuummmaaaaa!’ and laugh (no, I don’t know why, either).

The Mother remains mellow. She even sees fit to play a little joke-ette on us. She vanishes off into a corner, and fiddles mysteriously around with something for a bit. ‘What are you up to?’ we ask. ‘Oh, nothing! Ignore me!’ she says. We do. Then, five minutes later, she returns and declares, ‘Look! We have a visitor,’ and turns to reveal a 9’ inflatable Santa slowly being blown up in the corner of the living room by an electric pump. We all laugh for a moment, as The Mother trills: ‘A good friend of mine, thought he’d pop round, SUCH FUN!’ We chuckle once more, and turn away. The trouble is, poor old wheezing half-inflated Santa takes a fair old while to reach his full height: about six minutes, to be precise. A length of time for which it’s impossible to sustain laughter at an only mildly amusing joke. So, while he inflates, we turn back to our presents. At which a terrible rage rises up in The Mother. Through gritted teeth, she says, ‘NO, darlings. We must watch him inflate ALL THE WAY or he’ll be TERRIBLY UPSET. SUCH FUN! SUCH FUN! SUCH FUN!’ At this point, ‘Such fun’ turns from being an observation to a grim command.

This is the moment when we all realise that The Mother has shifted into Christmas Mode. We quietly watch the Santa inflate, and we solemnly applaud. It has begun.

This is EXACTLY what I’m talking about. That is worse than last year when Aunt Lily made a reindeer out of marzipan and she made us all line up and stroke it. Then we had to say OUT LOUD, ‘Happy Christmas, Mr Reindeer.’

SUCH FUN! So the stocking-opening calm fun has passed, and The Mother has entered the kitchen. You know you’re in for a rocky ride, as she’s wielding the electric meat-carver like a light sabre and foaming lightly at the mouth. She’s now in full neurotic vegetable-obsessed drill-sergeant mode. The jokey apron she normally wears (slogan: ‘I KISS BETTER THAN I COOK’ –
eurrgh
) has been replaced with a formal blue-and-white striped one. There are lists and rotas pinned up on the cupboards. Somebody’s ‘on potatoes’ at 10 a.m. Heaven forbid the sprouts aren’t peeled by 12:05, because we’ll need to be eating them at 1 p.m., and if we don’t eat at 1 p.m. the turkey might be dry and it’s been dry for the last five years because UNCLE HENRY NEVER GETS IT TOGETHER WITH THE SPROUTS. Last year, Henry was seconded to peas, and took the news about as well as he took the news of his recent ‘semi-voluntary’ redundancy: ‘I could do the sprouts, I will make them work this year.’

‘No, Henry, back away, you’re only capable of peas.’

‘Oh, poor Henry, poor, stupid Henry; only capable of peas. Well, how about I take the peas into the shed with this bottle of Scotch and show them who’s boss? Eh?’

‘No, Henry, if you’re going to be like that, you can go and sit in the car.’ And so on.

And
heaven forefend
there’s any flaw in the turkey, because The Mother got up at
4.30 a.m.
to put it in the oven. This is the same woman who, 364 days of the year, rises at ten and happily eats éclairs for breakfast whilst wearing a dressing gown and fluffy dog slippers. On any other day, she is the Queen of Relaxed. But at Christmas, with a houseful of eight guests (who at any other time of the year she would accommodate without noticing), she’ll be heard shouting: ‘I got up at four thirty this morning to put that turkey in the oven. Four thirty! It’s a magnificent beast, and please know that if anyone is late with their vegetable task, I will have arisen at four thirty, yes four thirty I tell you, for NO GOOD REASON. Now, who’s on bread sauce – YOU’RE LATE. Did I tell you that I got up at four thirty? Four thirty, to put that turkey in? Yes, four thirty. You heard.’

As the day continues, The Mother might be heard to offer some other truly worrying notifications, including:

By the tenth notification, we are all becoming increasingly tense and twitchy. Suddenly, Dad is taking the dog out for a walk (we don’t have one); Sis is nipping to the twenty-four-hour garage because she’s run out of nappies (this is in the pre-niece days); and Yvette’s gone to the emergency doctor for her chest infection (she’s perfectly healthy).

You see? This is what I mean. It’s hideola.

Ah, but here’s the thing, Little M. We kind of get used to it as the years go by, and we’d be sad if it didn’t happen any more. It’s part of the Christmas tradition. And we do love our Christmas traditions. Even . . . wait for it . . . The Games.

You’ve GOT to be kidding. Are we still playing games? Gross vibes. Why can’t I just sit in my room and listen to Talking Heads and try to put nail varnish on? I HATE games.

Yuletide games are an absolute must. And, MDRC, I’m not talking normal games like Charades or Cluedo, but weird hybrid games which have evolved over generations of family squabbles, and which no one entirely understands. We’ve got Charitctionary, and Hide and SeeklueodoOperation (in which someone hides and pretends to be dead, and whoever finds them has to find out whodunit by removing the bullet from a mock body without it buzzing – such fun). Then there’s the unadulterated thrill of trying to explain the rules of the game to Great Aunty June (or GAJ). Explaining a game to GAJ is a task akin to teaching a dolphin the Laws of Cricket.

Last Christmas, for instance, The Mother took the controversial step of introducing Jenga to the Games Agenda (which is laminated, and stuck up on the living room cabinet).

‘What’s this, dear?’ Great Aunty June enquired, looking in a slightly frightened fashion at the wooden bricks.

‘It’s Jenga, Aunty June,’ I said encouragingly. ‘We have to take a brick out of the tower and put it on top of the tower, making the tower taller. And whoever makes the tower fall over loses.’

‘Is it like Monopoly?’

‘No, not really. It’s –’

‘Who deals the cards?’

‘There aren’t any cards.’

‘What about the dice? Where’re the dice?’

‘There are no dice.’ By now, the impatience of The Mother was beginning to affect The Daughter.

‘Then how do we know who’s won?’

‘Um . . . we sort of don’t.’

‘Then why is it a game?’

‘Well,’ – the tension was rising now – ‘it, umm, you play it with people, so . . .’

‘Is it one of those modern computer games, then?’

‘No! No! How could it be? There’s no computer.’

‘I’ve never understood those computer games.’

‘
Jenga is not a computer game!
’ I took a deep breath and tried to calmly explain: ‘You just take a brick from the tower, like so –’

To demonstrate, I took a brick from the Jenga tower, which promptly toppled over sideways giving everyone their cue to massively enjoy the tower falling over.

‘Well, that doesn’t look like much fun at all. It keeps falling over.’

‘THAT
IS
THE FUN! We try and make it stay up, but when you remove bits, it might fall.’

‘Well, don’t remove bits then. That way it’ll stay up.’

By now I was forced to remove my jolly Christmas jumper as I was sweating with rage. ‘THEN IT WOULDN’T BE A GAME!’

‘I’ll go first; where’re the dice?’

‘THERE ARE NO DICE’ I shouted. ‘I can’t do this, I’m leaving.’ I kicked over the rest of the Jenga tower and stormed out as the remaining family members contrived to pretend MASSIVELY to enjoy the tower falling over with a Christmas chorus of ‘Jenggaaaaaaa, ha ha.’

I once experienced the delight and agony of playing Chinese Whispers with Great Aunty June. I cannot stress enough the sheer pointlessness of this endeavour: only at Christmas would we insist on carrying on playing it, because, of course, FUN MUST BE HAD AT ALL COSTS. Would we be quite so manic if this were April 12th and we all just happened to be together enjoying a large meal? No. I think not. But as it was Christmas, so we had to crack on with Chinese Whispers.

I was sitting next to Great Aunty June on the sofa and the rest of the assembled Christmassy company sat in hushed silence, all looking forward to the game. Dad whispered the phrase in my ear; I smiled, turned to GAJ and whispered the phrase in her ear.

Immediately, she spun round and shouted, ‘WHAT?’

I whispered it again, slightly more loudly.

‘
WHAT?
’ repeated GAJ, and looked at me, exasperated. ‘I can’t hear you, dear! I don’t know why you’re whispering; I’m deaf as a post, as well you know.’

‘
OH, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE!
’ I shouted. ‘
THE MOUSE HIT A CAT ON A MAT! THE MOUSE HIT A CAT ON A MAT!
’

Everyone turned to glare at me.

‘Well,’ said Mum, disappointed. ‘Now we’ve all heard it, it’s ruined.’

‘Yeah!’ echoed the rest of our not-so-jolly party. ‘The game’s ruined. Miranda’s ruined it. Nice one, Miranda. Well done, Miranda. RUINED.’

‘What was I supposed to do?’ I appealed to them. ‘She’s deaf, she can’t play Chinese WHISPERS!’

‘There’s no need to shout,’ shouted GAJ.

‘Oh, but there is. There is very obviously a need to shout. YOU CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING!’

‘Don’t be aggressive, dear,’ Mum said, giving me The Mother Stare.

‘It was
your
idea to play Chinese WHISPERS with YOUR deaf aunt.’

‘Don’t shout at your mother,’ Dad joined in.

‘I’m going to count my chocolate coins,’ announced Little Sis, who till now had remained silent.

‘You’re thirty-two!’ I protested.

‘She can do what she likes,’ snapped Mum. ‘It’s Christmas, remember. AND WE MUST HAVE FUN. Now, sit down and put your Christmas jumper back on.’

‘Now you’re shouting, dear,’ Dad said, somewhat boldly, I thought.

‘Don’t tell me not to shout!’ Mum turned The Mother Stare onto Dad. ‘I got up this morning at four thirty TO PUT YOUR TURKEY IN. FOUR THIRTY!’