Melancholia from Greek μελαγχολία - melancholia, "sadness", - well it’s officially started. I heard Harry Belafonte’s “Mary’s Boy Child” on the radio and the switch has been thrown. I love Christmas. I’m not a bah-humbug sort of guy. People are generally nicer (apart from when you are trying to get the last parking space, then “F*ck you”) but for a brief period you do see a few more smiles on faces. But then I also start feeling a lump in my throat around this time. I realised a while ago that it’s for my lost youth – the Christmases that went before with things that meant something. A large family all living in the same sort of vicinity, parents that didn’t have a pot to piss in but tried to make the best of things -second hand bikes, a stereo system no longer used by an uncle, Action Man bits passed from nephews, were some of the pressies I got, all lovingly wrapped by my parents as if they were the most expensive toys from Hamleys.
Now it’s left for me to remember those days via an old song (the Old Man always played Jim Reeves’ Christmas Album! As kids we were highly embarrassed by it but I HAD to buy it after he died – I needed to be transported back and feel him around again), an old decoration rescued when I left home to hang on my own tree. A large number of those people who made those Christmases so special are no longer around but again this year I shall be thinking of them, transport myself back to being 10 again when the most important thing was just being in the bosom of my family. A little early, I know, but have fun this year……be good !

For you, Pop..