Lies, Damned Lies

Me, parenting.

Shit on a stick, have you any idea how many lies I and Conjugal Kraken have told Kraken Junior this Crimbo? Seriously, if you put them in a pile they'd stand high enough to poke the flying reindeer in the frozen smalls. We have told porkies like they'd be our last ever taste of bacon and we've done it with the selfish desperation of any poor fucker corralling a three year old just as Santa raids Argos.
Thing is, most of the time we are straight with the infant beast. She wants to know why the moon shines, I blather on about bouncing sunshine and orbital patterns. She asks why grass is green, I bore her to tears about chlorophyll. Seriously, she asked me about periods last week (that's what happens when you never get to go to the bloody toilet on your own, pardon the pun) and I found myself describing menstrual patterns as if they were created by Michael Rosen. 
So what the fuck happened when Christmas came? Suddenly we're telling her that Santa's watching every move, like a peeping tom. As the kraken cave lacks a chimney we start carving stories about how he's going to sneak through the front door like a bauble-strewn Crimewatch re-enactment. Fuck knows what happened in the minutes before KJ went to bed on Crimbo Eve but I found myself telling her that she had to clean her teeth properly so that Santa could find her stocking by the glow of her fangs alone.
And now that it's all over I wonder what the fuck we've done. if she found out now that there's no such thing a Santa (sorry to spoil the surprise, kraken-fumblers) we'd never be safe in our beds again. She'd be distraught and we'd be in freshly dug graves by the morning. 
So we'll tone it down a bit next year. Perhaps drop the stories about rain being reindeer wee. Or forget to tell her that Santa'll commit suicide if we don't leave him a minced pie and a bottle of stout.
Then again, come next year when she's giving us her fifteenth rendition of Jingle Bells in the same one hour period for the tenth day in a row, I'll tell her any-fucking-thing I have to just to get her to shut the bugger up. So on second thoughts, perhaps this year we didn't tell her enough lies. At least I've got another 360-odd to think up a few more. Suggestions on a postcard please.

Mental Hell

Bloody misery guts

Think I'm a Bah Humbug kinda kraken? Well,this is nothing. You should have seen me last Christmas when I was in the middle of my breakdown. You'd swear Santa'd been found dead in our chimney and that the wailing of the world's children was making the globe spin off its axis.
The thing is, this what was going on in my screwed-up noggin. If Santa was festering in the chimney I was the only person who knew it. As far as the rest of the world was concerned I was being my usual festive self, secretly propped up by regular sobs into a cushion before resuming the merry state that I thought everyone expected of me. 
In short, last Christmas was fucking horrible. I alone was carrying Santa's sack and it was weighed down with breeze blocks. Blitzen, Donner, Rudolf and the crew were all too busy pissing their names into the snow to help and I was drowning in goodwill that I felt I just didn't deserve to receive.
It got worse on Crimbo morn when I was presented with a fantastic gift by Conjugal Kraken which pitched me into a swirling state of panic at whether I deserved to receive anything other than a kick in the face. I was trapped in some terrible mentally-induced purgatory but with baubles and Noddy fucking Holder. 
Anyway, why am I telling you this? It's my blathering way of saying that happy Christmases don't necessarily arrive dressed in ribbons and spangly paper. Sometimes it's what you do for people, rather than what you get them, that's important and when you're grappling with a depressive that's more important than ever.
This year, when I've been asked what I want for Crimbo the best I can come up with is that I want some semblance of peace. In my head, I mean. I just want a day that contains some happiness and laughter and most of all a day where my depression gets so knotted up in tinsel that it throttles itself. Yeah, I'd like a few books but that's it. Most of all I'd just like to feel anything but the biggest failure/ oddball/ nutjob in the known universe. 
I know, I know, it's too late for that. It's not too late for this Crimbo day to be a good one though. I'm keeping the hope alive, especially now that the sweep has rendered our chimney corpse free.

All Talk

Just. Shut. Up.

Can someone please tell me what I can talk about with Kraken Junior when we wake up on Boxing Day morn? I ask because for the last three months the conversation in our cave has been about bugger all but Christmas. I'm starting to wonder what filled our parental chats for the first nine months of 2011. Whatever it was, it must as been as dull a fuck.
Don't blame Conjugal Kraken and I. If I had my way Crimbo would be dropped into conversation at approximately 5pm on Christmas Eve and the festive spruce would be torn down 24 hours later. Blame the world around her. Christ, KJ's school started practising carols for the Christmas concert the day after Halloween. In the middle of October I was accosted by one of her fellow three year olds who told me, advisedly, "Christmas is just around the corner, you know!". And Tesco was letting tinsel slither about the place by then which meant my festive denials were the equivalent of Santa pissing into the wind.
KJ's school - a place of great fabulousness - really hasn't stinted with the Crimbo contributions. There have been concerts, parties, gift making, singalongs...even breakfast with Santa. I seriously wondered if KJ'd start getting Santasick or develop a festive fatigue and start begging for mercy.
All of which means that every day for the last six weeks KJ has asked me whether it's Christmas yet. And every day I've muttered something like "No, darling (for fuck's sake), not yet." Thankfully an advent calendar has helped her to pace herself lest she should have an excitement-induced stroke somewhere around Dec 12. 
Course, now that we're hours way from the big day things are becoming frenzied. School's out. There are gifts under the tree. People we try to see just once a year are appearing on the doorstep. The festive jig is, indeed, up. The three year old's hysteria can no longer be contained. 
By the time Santa comes down the chimney, KJ will be Broadmoor-ready. In fact the big man will need all his powers of strength and stealth if he's to avoid being wrestled to the ground by a wild haired, knee-high goblin dressed in Tinkerbell pyjamas while shrieking a rendition of Santa Claus is Comin' to Town that's thankfully nearing the end of a three month run.
So, as I say, what shall we talk about on Boxing Day? I've a feeling it'll be witness statements and a list of charges that include murder.

Taking the Mick

Praying for a Buble-free Crimbo

Quick! Call the rozzers! Christmas has been hijacked! Oh, hold on, no it hasn't, it's just Michael Bublé and his Crimbo album. It might as well be a hijacking though. You'd think that Micky Bubbles - as we call him in our cave - has bloody well invented Christmas, the way he's being slathered all over the nation. 
For fuck's sake, he's on the radio and telly so much that I've started mistaking him for Santa. Kraken Junior thinks that on Crimbo Eve a grinning Canadian warbler is going to drop down the chimney just to initiate her into his housewife-cluttered fan base. 
In fact, between his crooning rendition of Silent Night and his nice-guy persona it's a Christmas miracle that ITV/ Daily Mail/ the hags from Loose Women haven't mustered their own hijacking of Bubbles himself, kidnapping him just to drool over his middle-of-the-road style of innocuousness.
Look, I'm sure that he's a lovely guy. But can someone just turn the man off now? I dunno, send him to Labrador where he can bang out Little Donkey without it representing another assault on our tellies/ radios/ festive sensibilities.
That's it, Bubbles. Bugger off to your own baubles and leave ours to dangle in peace.

Going Postal

A man with big sacks

Just as I do every frigging year, I'm currently performing an internal debate over sending Crimbo cards. It's a bastard. I love my friends and family and want 'em to know it but I hate writing out festive cards. Last year I had a legitimate excuse for not doing it - even breakdowns have silver linings - but what about this year? 
Well, I've learned several things from spending the last 18 months rocking back n forth in a corner of the living room and chewing on a leather strap. One of them is that life's too short to be fretting over this malarchy.
Believe me, this is no reflection of how much I love my mates. It's a reflection of how well my nosebag of meds is working instead. Card writing has always made me want to shove a pen up my nose but now that my brain has been re-wired by a monumental meltdown it's even more of a dance with the demons of stationery.
The kraken festive farce will begin with me wracking my brains for the names of even my closest friends. Then I'll make and lose and make another and lose another list of recipients. By this time I'll be so confused I'll start thinking it's Easter. Then I'll get so overwhelmed at the prospect of having to write out a grand total of 30 cards that I'll need a good sob, a diazepam and an afternoon's sleep. Upon waking it'll take me an hour to find my address book and and then I'll blindly drive around in circles looking for a post office. That's all before I goggle at the friendly local post mistress and holler, "46p! For a first class stamp? Really? 46p?" Then, in my fury, I'll rip three of the little fuckers, have to buy more and will round off the entire debacle by stumbling into the street to the tune of police sirens and psych nurses wielding laden syringes.
So this is why your mantelpiece won't groan with kraken greetings this year. I am, though, happy to clog up your web browser with f-bombs instead. So please accept this new regime with many happy hugs and much love. Much fucking love, in fact. Ha, and you think I'm not festive...

Timber!

We're going for
something small this year

Tomorrow we're decorating the kraken cave with a Christmas tree. I tell you this because it might be useful information when the police ask for witnesses. Personally I'd put the tree up at 9pm on Crimbo Eve and then saw up the fucker at 9am on Boxing Day but with Kraken Junior in her fully festive mode that's out of the question. 
Ironically, I used to love shoving an expensive spruce into the corner of the living room and festooning it with flammable tat. Now, while I long to love the day of erection (as it were) I know that doing it with a three year old who's stamping on baubles/ chewing tinsel/ crying because the fairy is the wrong shade of pink is a complete and utter fucker. Yes, it should be a day of great joy where we share the hanging of lights, conjure up fabulous displays of glitter and then gaze adoringly at our creation as it twinkles but c'mon will you? It's more likely to end as it did last year with me sobbing on the doorstep while stabbing myself in the foot with the sharpest plastic star I could find.
And that's the thing about Crimbo with kids isn't it? Yeah, it's a joy to see how excited they get at seeing Santa and to watch their faces on Crimbo morn. Yet it's also a complete bastard when they refuse to eat their turkey dinner because the stuffing isn't the right colour and throw an almighty wobbly at 3pm because exhaustion has stolen their brains.
It's the same business with the tree. In my imagination it's a scene from a Bing Crosby festive bonanza. In reality it's just a scene from, well, Bonanza. Except where the Injuns win. 
Now go dial 999 and forewarn the police. And tell them to bring a chainsaw.

Crackers and Cobblers

Can't afford clothes, though

Whoa! Listen to this for a big bowl of wrong. Abbey Clancy, model and footy wife (God, what a dispiriting description) is bemoaning the fact that her nine month old daughter - yes, nine months - has already opened all of her Crimbo presents in a fit of festive excitement. Poor Clancy now has to buy her more presents so that the kid has something to open on Christmas day.
What a pile of complete and utter fucking bollocks. What a load of absolute cock. What a bulging sackful of self-indulgent, spoiled, overpaid, deluded stool water. There are so many things wrong with Clancy's 'predicament' that I barely know where to start ripping it apart. Every lobe of my brain is misfiring and sparks are squirting from my nostrils. 
Clancy, love, you need to learn a few things and fast. Your kid is nine months old. She still doesn't know what to do with her various sphincters let alone root around at the bottom of your many wardrobes, find her presents, unwrap them and fret about how she's fucked up her first Christmas. If she's opened her gifts in a festive frenzy it's your fault not hers, you pan-faced footy shag. Get a grip woman. Kraken Junior turns four next month and she's still happy with a cardboard box, a roll of sticky tape and a fistful of Cheerios. 
Anyway, spare a thought for the rest of country before you start cracking on about what a fucker it is to have to spoil your daughter twice in quick succession will you? These are straitened times for Christ's sake. Most people reading your ridiculous spoutings will be struggling to make ends meet enough to produce a turkey for the table. Gifts for their kids will drag them screaming into the red and January will be decorated with unpaid bills. And yeah, while that in itself is a blog post (working title: the many daft fuckers who go into debt for Christmas) for most families that's the only option open to them these days. 
So, Clancy, if you're expecting sympathy from this particular kraken you're barking up the wrong Norway spruce. Go ahead and buy your nine month old a diamond encrusted motorised scooter or treat her to her first catamaran. Whatever. Just don't expect us to give a flying fuck about what a terrible burden this is upon you this festive season. Now go back to your baubles and shut the bugger up.

God Tink Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Move over Charlt, there's
a new Tink in town.

Aye, the consumerist juggernaut carries on driving then reversing then driving then reversing over Christmas in this particular kraken's cave. Hauling Kraken Junior to school this morning she was warbling some God-based tune or other that she'd learned there. Course, the conversation turned to praying (I was praying for peace and frigging quiet which shows exactly the power of prayer). Here's how it went:
Me: "People pray to lots of different gods you know, not just the guy with the beard."
Kraken Junior: "Like Jesus?"
Me: "Kind of. And like Buddha or Shiva. Depends on what you believe in."
Kraken Junior: "And Tinkerbell?"
Me: "Eh?"
Kraken Junior: "And Hello Kitty?"
Me (under my breath): "Oh for fuck's sake..."
Kraken Junior: "Whoooaaa, you said a naughty word!"
Too fucking right I did, my lovely back-seat beast. Problem is that as far as little krakens are concerned the slinky Tinkerbell and the soulless Hello Kitty are gods aren't they? They may not wage wars against infidels or plunge pitchforks into gays and lesbians but they wreak frigging havoc amongst the toddler masses. It's like an infant form of Catholicism, where God is everywhere even when you're beating one off. That's because the likes of Tink and Kitty are similarly omnipresent. Yeah, they're on toys but they're also plastered all over magazines, tins of food, yoghurts, shoes, clothes...I've even seen Tink and her fairy dust mantra on cars, for fuck's sake. No wonder Kraken Junior reckons Hello Kitty wants her for a sunbeam.
It's not that I want her to believe in God, mind you. Every time she bounds out of school with some new prayer under her belt I pep talk her about how she doesn't need to ask God for strength or power or whatever because she embodies all of those things herself. Sod getting on your knees and asking for a better life. Get on your feet and make it for yourself instead, that's the gospel in our cave.
But the idea of putting Tink and Kitty up there with other spouting deities withers what's left of my belief in mankind. By the time she's 16 she'll be praying to the Benson and Hedges bible and crossing herself at the altar of Diamond White. I think another one of my pep talks is in order. She'd better start rubbing her Tink beads and muttering her Hail Kitties, by Christ on a bike (and even he's pedalling as far from here as he can get).

Money Worries

Aye, it's driving me to drink too

Jesus, I'm coming over all bah humbug but, then again, what the frig did you expect? I am a kraken with a love of Christmas but a spiralling disgust of the consumerism that has draped itself all over it, like a balding string of tinsel that's been pissed on by a tramp.
I mean, did you read today about the bell-ends who fought - yes, fought - over the tat being flogged in the post-Thanksgiving sales in LA? In an act of 'competitive shopping' some lunatic used pepper spray to beat her fellow shoppers to whatever shit she thought she couldn't live without. How delightfully festive.
Problem is that this grasping spirit of shit is abso-frigging-lutely everywhere. Christmas has turned into some marathon spending session punctuated only by telling other shoppers to go fuck themselves when they make a grab for the last Yardley bath cubes on the shelf. 
This vileness doesn't end at 5pm on Crimbo Eve either. My kraken cave looks out over a valley which includes a small retail park. Blissfully empty on the big day itself - I picture families frolicking together under a festive tree - by 9am on Boxing Day it's fucking rammed with people who want to force their New Year debt to new heights. Oh, how I long to run through them with a gun.
Thing is, as I froth over this it's still November. Which means said frothing hasn't even gotten started yet thanks to there being a full 24 days of December for me to despair of the grasping bastards that surround me. So if there's one thing I wish for this Christmas it's a sackful of patience, grace and goodwill. But if Santa fucks that up, as he does most years, I'll make do with something lethal and sawn-off, OK?

One Bulb Short...
Today, November 11 2011, I saw my first set of domestic Christmas lights flashing in a bay window. November. The eleventh. 
Freaks.

Park (Your Arse) Life

Yeah? And what are you gonna
do about it, Santa?

Tell me, please, what's this national obsession the UK has with buying new sofas for Christmas? It used to all be about the Chocolate Orange, for Christ's sake. Now it's a stampede to furnish your digs with a lurid three seater, matching armchair and pouffe (as well as furnishing your bank account with a raging New Year's debt).
But why? How in the fuck does having a new sofa improve your Christmas? By making you spend the entire pre-Crimbo rush waiting for the delivery guys to appear? Or by making you destroy any festive cheer by screaming at the kids because they smeared choc all over the thing by 7am on Christmas morn?
Are people fucking mad? Christmas is the last time on earth to buy a new sofa what with all that mulled wine sloshing about and todders chucking up the entire contents of any given selection box. 
I ask you, is it down to fear? That Santa won't have anywhere to rest his porky arse after breaking into your house like a festive pervert? Or perhaps it's an irrational terror of the eternal DFS sale ending.
More likely it's a fear that by ignoring your arsely needs you'll have a shit Christmas, just like the ads tell you will happen if you don't invest in something with ribbed velour and four casters. 
Truth is, though, that new sofas do not a merry Christmas make. Rather they make for a terse and shouty festive period where everyone is so scared of fucking up the purchase before the 2014 repayments start that they spend the big day squatting on the floor instead. Merry Christmas, my, and the nation's collective, arse.

Jingle Balls
Please allow me to stab myself in the ears. I've just heard that Smooth Xmas, a new radio station, will be launched this week. It touts itself as "the UK's first national pure Christmas station" and it will be sucking the living shit out of my festive cheer from November 1 (November the fucking first!) until December 27. So frigging much for Bonfire Night then. Jingle balls indeed.