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– ON CHRISTMAS – agitate the Marines and squint at the telly (but only when it was showing epics). Like all kingly babies, I imagined myself to have a Divine Right; it was as if, by ruining Christmas for myself I could somehow ruin it for everyone else. If I weren’t going to have gifts, treats and sweetmeats, I would dash them from the hands of all. It all went swimmingly. Christmas Day dawned satisfyingly bleak and gloomy: there was no snow to make the dull suburban street look anything but bare and uninviting. I squatted in my tumbledown bed re-enacting Iwo Jima .002-scale. At approximately lunchtime I went into the kitchen and boiled my bags of rice and chicken slop in their plastic bags, but when I got them on to the plate they tasted so unpalatable I binned them, and shuffled back to bed. But then, horror of horrors, at about four in the afternoon there came a loud and insistent knocking. I considered not answering it and stayed doggo, but then jolly voices were raised – calling out my name, and residual manners forced me upright. When I swung open the front door there was my girlfriend, together with her parents and her younger brother. I had requested, then pleaded, and finally insisted that she leave me alone – I wanted no part of her cheerful, cosy, loving family. She, however, had ignored my entreaties, reasoning – quite rightly – that here was a Scrooge who needed saving from himself: her family were on their way from London to visit relatives in 158
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– Will Self – Cheltenham, why on earth shouldn’t they drop by. I think I made them tea – but I may not have. I certainly recall that there was a cosmic awkwardness in the collision between my attitudinising and their hearty affect, just as my undress dishevelment looked worse than ever set beside their smart holiday attire. They didn’t stop for long – I stuck to my guns and refused to go with them. And when they were gone I discovered that they’d done me a favour, for things were far worse than before; instead of being the heroic captain of my solitude, I was merely lonely. I like to think I understood that very day – although, it may have been a lesson it took me longer to absorb – that deliberately being alone on Christmas Day was a bad move; that it was tempting fate to toy with isolation, when life, with all its impulsive alacrity, may at any time capriciously thrust you out in the cold. 159

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– Will Self –

Cheltenham, why on earth shouldn’t they drop by.

I think I made them tea – but I may not have. I certainly recall that there was a cosmic awkwardness in the collision between my attitudinising and their hearty affect, just as my undress dishevelment looked worse than ever set beside their smart holiday attire. They didn’t stop for long – I stuck to my guns and refused to go with them. And when they were gone I discovered that they’d done me a favour, for things were far worse than before; instead of being the heroic captain of my solitude, I was merely lonely. I like to think I understood that very day – although, it may have been a lesson it took me longer to absorb – that deliberately being alone on Christmas Day was a bad move; that it was tempting fate to toy with isolation, when life, with all its impulsive alacrity, may at any time capriciously thrust you out in the cold.

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