Posted on by JonnyB

We shop for baby clothes.

I realise that this opening sentence is likely to enthuse the punters about as much as a BBC announcer’s “and now, starring Ross Kemp…” but I’m afraid non about-to-have-a-baby people will just have to get used to it.

I also realise that I have used that Ross Kemp analogy before, in relation to pram shopping. You see? It’s not just the TV shows that he is involved with that are all merely the same idea just reworked over and over again. It is even the sentences.

“How about this one?” asks the LTLP, indicating a rabbit outfit.

I give it a look of the utmost disapproval. Whilst the all-in-one sleep costume things are clearly practical and snug and warm and all that, I just cannot get my head round the idea that they have to have extra ‘cute’ built in.

“I am not,” I inform her, “dressing my child as a rabbit.”

I am determined that the poor thing will go through life with some gravitas and dignity, i.e. follow in the footsteps of its father. We pass some that have been created like a Father Christmas outfit. These are heavily reduced, having had an original RRP, according to the lying discount outlet, of nine grillion pounds. Quite apart from the once-again unnecessary and nauseating cutesy-cuteness, having a Santa outfit is clearly last month’s fashion, which is something kids immediately pick up on. I do not want it to be bullied in the delivery suite.

In fact there seems nothing that does not have some form of yeukky pictorial thing on it. Pooh Bear is the worst offender. He gets everywhere. As regular readers will have worked out, Pooh Bear has been a great influence on me over the years. But this is not Real Pooh Bear. It is the twisted, honey-coated Disney travesty version. Insurgent Pooh Bear. His image graces everything from clothes to bibs to baths to nappies. I wish to poke him in the eye and then vivesect him.

Meanwhile, Real Pooh Bear lives without any major marketing deal, probably eking out an existence back in the Hundred Acre Wood with Continuity Piglet and the breakaway paramilitary wing of Rabbit’s Friends and Relations.

We leave the baby clothes shop. I buy myself a shirt.

Posted on by JonnyB

I buy a turkey.

Not a particularly unusual action for the late-December period, but this is on December 28th. I stare at the frozen bird, alone in the Tesco freezer, eight-and-a-half kilograms for a fiver.

This provides me with a dilemma. Having dined in the Village Pub on Christmas Day, I am in the odd and unprecedented position of not having the ingredients for a nice turkey sandwich over the New Year. A fiver is a ridiculous ridiculous price to pay for what could be dinner for the next few days. I wrestle with my conscience.

I don’t like factory farming, and the factory farming of turkey is particularly evil. Nevertheless, it is only a fiver. This will save me money, which I could give to a turkey charity if I wanted to. So really I would be performing a moral act by purchasing the bird.

This is almost moral relativism, which is a proper philosophy featuring in books. I take the turkey to the checkout, confident that Jean-Paul Sartre would have done the same. If I have a subsequent crisis of conscience I can always just defrost it then release it back into the wild.

Plus it is a Bernard Matthews bird, and I like to support local producers.

Back at the cottage, I check the packaging. There is an ‘ingredients’ list on the back. I had kind of hoped that the ‘ingredients’ list would read something like ‘ingredients: a turkey’, but there are several other useful and tasty things in there as well, and at least the ‘turkey’ part of the ingredients comes first, and is followed by a reassuring 95% number. This means that all the other soya oil, flavouring etc. weighs only about 425 grammes (which is less than a pound, for American readers) (and Tesco is a big supermarket). This seems reasonable.

I am pleased with my purchase. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a home-cooked bird to munch on – it is as traditional as disappointing crackers and wondering why one bothered to purchase a newspaper on Boxing Day. Some home-made bread and piccalilli completes the picture. 2006 approaches, the snow falls in a picturesque fashion and James Blunt is not on the radio. A happy and wonderful New Year to you all.

Posted on by JonnyB
A very merry Christmas to all
readers, linkers, commenters and lurkers

From the management and staff
at JonnyB’s Private Secret Diary.

We will be returning in the New Year for your continued entertainment.

If you asked for a PC for Christmas purely so that you could read this, then you’ll find that October 2004 is probably the best place to start.