Ill Prepared & Ingrate

I say it every year like a mantra on the 26th of December - next year Im going to start preparing things in June to get organised for christmas. This year I feel horribly unorganised. As with everyone more finances would be welcome to lighten the load. I remember you couldnt find anyone more organised than I when it came to the festive season, I also would spend hours constructing elaboratly decorated parcels for my friends overseas but that was me as a single woman with free time, no kids, no step children and no extra family. My children are at that age also that they are between toys so to speak, the stuff thats out is either too old for them or too old hat, Id really love to get them something thats durable , that they cant eat without electrocuting themselves, they cant use as a blugeoning instrument and more importantly educational and fun..

I think christmas was very easy for me as a child, anything I usually asked for I got which was really cool of my parents I mean there were five of us, ireland was still considered to be a third world country and there was a recession on, luckily for Dad he was head waiter on a state Ferry restaurant that so many people escaped on immigrating to the uk looking for work to send back money to support families; Dad would make a weeks wages in a days tips alone and with the benefits of duty free and goodies/perks of the job our family were considerably more comfortable than most.

I can only remember having my nose put out of joint twice when I was a child at christmas; Once when my brother got an 'action man/ GI Joe' tomahawk helicopter, it was huge and fairly impressive, I was in that stage where I was tiring of dollies and the tomahawk had that je nais se quoi factor to it. Like I said it was impressive, buttons, functions and incapsulated the same awe and wonder to me as it did my brother. I swooped in for the liberation of this mechanical beast when my brothers guard was down (probably was in the bathroom at the time). I ran upstairs and hid it in the airing cupboard. I can still see it now covered in an orange candlewick bedspread , propellers sticking out, a snotty tearful younger brother and my mother pointing at it yelling at me..After that he guarded it with his life.


The other incident happened much later on, more or less when I was about 13. It was the early 80s I had just started a new school, punk, new wave and dramatic colors where the norm for my peers. Boots which was a huge drugstore company in england had a pretty impressive make up campaign on the tv and I wanted to be painted like an in'jin. My sister who is a year older than me , who had no interest in make up at all got a box set of big Boots make up! Oh the indignity I felt!!! This was at a stage where I knew that father christmas did not exist so the people resposible for the scenario where my parents. A cutting look that only Damien Thorn could exhude was given and my face clouded like a madagascan thunder storm. I felt robbed - I was more deserving of this gift! How could they do this to me? Oh yeah I was pretty ungrateful that day to say the least I screamed into my pillow to alleviate the stress and to add insult to injury my sister would not let me have ' a go ' with the make up, I was merely allowed was to gaze at it misty eyed. I have no doubt now what my parents did was right, I wanted to be Toyah at 12 years old. I cant remember what I got for christmas that year but my Dad still chuckles out aloud when he recants the tale.