The twelve weeks of Christmas

Christmas comes but once a year, but it lasts for three whole months.
     Toy manufactures begin to bombard our television screens with Christmas toys long before the leaves of autumn begin to fall. If you are foolish enough to purchase these can't live without items in October, in a misguided attempt to spread the cost of Christmas, you  will soon discover that these much coveted items are no longer on the most wanted list by the time that Christmas finally arrives.
     Christmas decorations are soon in the shops, and it's impossible to walk around the supermarket without hearing Christmas songs played on a loop system. Pity the poor checkout girls who must listen to the same songs for three whole months every year, while wearing antlers, and hats with bells and holly.   

     

Before Halloween arrives we have become the proud owners of a Christmas cake, a Christmas pudding, a box of crackers and all of the presents are wrapped and residing in the loft. We have to purchase mince pies because they are on sale, but as the use by date expires eight weeks before Christmas they have to be eaten up and replacements bought. Chocolates, sold in tins and boxes, are everywhere, but be honest, how many of us will be able to resist eating them before Christmas arrives?
     Every January I take down the Christmas lights carefully, I wrap them up carefully, and put them away in an old suitcase in the loft. By the time I get them out on the first weekend in December, they look like a ball of wool that the cat's been playing with. Although they were working perfectly well when mothballed, it takes hours before every set is once again working, and some may not. If you do need a new set of lights on December 1st, then forget it, as they were all sold weeks ago. Now you might expect people to be grateful for all of the expense and effort that I've incurred to make the dark days of winter a little brighter. Not a bit of it. I was savaged by an elderly neighbour who informed me that a simple holly wreath, like hers, would have been sufficient.
     In December the grandchildren will want to visit Santa's grotto. It cost will cost me about £10 pounds each for a present, which turns out to be a jigsaw puzzle priced at £3.50 and reduced, because of poor sales, to £1.99, and you can bet that at least one of the grandchildren will doubt Santa's credentials loudly and publicly.
     You can always tell when it's getting  close to Christmas, as Easter eggs will begin to appear in the shops, and every other advert on television will be trying to persuade us to purchase a three piece suite, and if you go into a store in search of last minute Christmas decorations you will discover that they have already been replaced by garden furniture. 
     If Christmas fails to live up to your expectations this year, then worry not, as you need only to wait until the 1st October for the Christmas circus to begin all over again.

Book Art

      I am a book, and it has to be said that printed books are being persecuted since the advent of the e-book. I understand the evolutionary concept that the strong must survive while the weak will perish, but we, the books, have been around, in printed form since William Caxton invented the printing press in 1415, and for hundreds of years before that as illuminated manuscripts, while our ancestors, the scrolls, have been around for thousands of years. Should we be cast aside after so many years of faithful service to humanity?

  I can't help but notice the increasing amounts of book art displayed on social websites.  Let's be honest they're really rather clever, but the bookworm inside of me can't help but think that destroying books, in the name of art, is a sacrilege. HG Wells didn't write War of the Worlds as an origami project, nor did Arthur Conan Doyle conceive The Hound of the Baskervilles so that it could be converted into a popup book.

      

     The other kind of abuse I've noticed, is the placing of books to form a sculpture, books floating in the air, or used as stepping stones across a field. Books used to make igloos or arched supports for ceilings. When did books become building blocks? Now I have the highest regard for bricks, they've been around for almost as long as books, and perform a valuable service, but come on, someone has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours constructing a story, or explaining a phenomenon, books  should be read and digested, not walked upon or used to build Wendy houses. Artists, go back to your paints and clay, your stone and marble, your unmade beds and preserved wildlife in formaldehyde, and leave us books alone. Readers, demand a real book, not a text message, when we are gone we are gone, and I guarantee we will be missed. Remember that the vinyl record was replaced by the tape cassette; remember how well that turned out.


This was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Real Book Foundation.

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