This year I seem to have found the festive onslaught less pernicious than previously. Maybe it's the array of Christmas lights in the narrow streets of Covent Garden as I walk home, that were not to be found on the broad, crammed Strand of yesteryear. Maybe it's the miserly yet necessary rationing of Christmas music instigated around the office in order to keep things fresh; limiting us to only one or two renditions of Wham's Last Christmas per day. This is the first year in a while that I've had an advent calendar, now that I think of it. Maybe it's just that seasonal misanthropy can only keep a fellow happy for so long.
Whatever the reason, this unexpected swell of Christmas cheer lead us quickly onto the concept of throwing a party. Invites were sent (digitally), initially ignored (also digitally) and then finally confirmed (in person, due to unanimous digital apathy).
To be fair, our preparations were as detailed as they were far-reaching. Mistletoe on door frames. Fairy lights almost everywhere. Carpets cleaned. A fridge full of champagne. Pongo's delicious mulled wine simmering tacitly on the stove (cinnamon, nutmeg etc all included, no expense spared). A salad bowl full of kettle chips standing nonchalantly on every coffee table and bannister, mince pies with home made brandy cream lurking suggestively in every nook, crevice and cranny. I even straightened the living room rug.
The halls were literally decked with boughs of holly. Such peaceful domestic bliss. Such serenity. I almost expected the Virgin Mary herself to knock timidly on the door, and for the Good Lord himself to be born in the gap between the vacuum cleaner and Honksy's stack of girly vaudevillian romance novels.
What descended upon the house was quite the opposite. What descended upon the house was something bestial, and from which I'm not certain I shall ever fully recover.
Fortuitously most of the following events are scorched from my memory like the blackened grass of Hiroshima. Some things I do recall though are as follows:
- Pongo forcefeeding me four consecutive shots of Killepitsch Premium Krauterlikor, a thick, foul-tasting dose of human excrement with 42% alcohol content
- Parading around the kitchen wearing The Game Boy's turkey helmet
- Beer
- Apple sours
- Mulled wine
- Apple sours
- Beer
- Party Squid trying to cellotape a robin to his fingers to accentuate his bauble
- Unknown Party Guest #17 smashing his hand on a ceiling lampshade, said lampshade smashing on his head, Unknown Party Guest #17 being taken to A&E by Dutch's brother 'Sturgeon's Electro-Magnet'
- Killepitsch Premium Krauterlikor (for which I'd by now developed quite a taste)
- Hammering on my bathroom door to interrupt the two people either having sex or killing each other within
- The Bear and the Toad fighting over who had the worst Christmas jumper
- The Agent asking me if he was being 'too rapey' with the neighbours
- The hideously inebriated schoolteacher who crawled into my bed after I'd gone to sleep and demanded nastily that I 'move up'
The net result was that the next morning I awoke next to a girl who had no knowledge of requestioning over 75% of my bed space, nor the crude and insulting brand of temerity with which she had done so. She was suitably bashful, thankfully, and I ejected her from the room on stable enough terms. The situation awaiting me downstairs, however, was something far more difficult to set right.
...bottles. Cans. Mess. Squalor. Wretched puddles of toxic ooze. A man wearing a rudimentary head-bandage sprawled wildly on the living room rug (no longer even vaguely straight). Tinsel hanging forlornly from the mantelpiece. Cigarette butts trodden repeatedly into the carpet. A glove from our first aid kit hanging from a picture frame. A plate of vomit on the kitchen table. One of Pongo's best dinner plates. Probably Pongo's vomit...
On viewing this utterly heinous spectacle, the only thing left for it was to run.
I think I'm still running.
I miss you Octopus, and think of you always.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
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