I thought I'd do my Christmas shopping early this year (I usually leave it til Christmas Eve) and as it was Monday I assumed the shops would be fairly quiet. But I tell you I got down to Oxford Street and I've never seen anything like it. The streets were thronging. For some unearthly reason everyone in London must have chosen to do their Christmas shop today. You couldn't even get along the pavement there were so many people queuing to get in. So I can only wonder what it was like inside.
Even more bizarrely everyone had obviously come on the tube, because the roads were completely empty. Apart from a couple of those open top tourist buses with some bloody foreign idiots waving at the frustrated shoppers below. The shoppers were furious with the smartly dressed visitors to our country. They were screaming at them as they crawled by (honestly even when the roads are clear traffic is at a snail's pace). Perhaps they were particularly enraged as the tourist men seemed to be showing off some fancy Christmas gift that they had somehow managed to procure. It was a big gold cup. A bit tacky if you ask me and much too big to have your cocoa in. If I ended up with that on Christmas morning I'd feign delight, but inside I'd be saying, "Where's the series 4 DVD box set of Futurama, then?"
One fella on the bus seemed particularly pleased with himself and not unjustly the crowd called him a johnny. Thousands of people all shouting the prophylactic based insult at him. He must have felt like the most useless and unpopular man in the country. I was glad that that wasn't me.
I'm amazed those fellas got out of there alive.
Ha ha ha. I am funny.
In actual fact I didn't go to Oxford St at all. I was still in bed having inadvisedly stayed up late watching "Gregory's Two Girls" on Channel 4 right to the end. I guess I was hoping it might suddenly become good or funny or make some kind of sense, but it ended as poorly and as morally ambigiously and as unfunnily as it had been throughout. None of the charm and delight of the original film. No Claire Grogan. Why hadn't I turned it off?
Still it was good that I couldn't be arsed to go and take part in this day of national celebration happening only a few miles down the road. I can tell my grandkids that I saw some of it on the TV, before getting a bit bored and deciding to play Futurama on the PS2.
I was in bed during the poll tax riot as well, though saw a bit of it on TV.
I miss all the great historical moments thanks to my laziness. Imagine if Samuel Pepys had slept through the Great Fire of London. That's what makes him better at writing a diary than me. You know, the fact that he witnessed stuff (other than his iron blowing up).
But if he'd had a Playstation (or even an Atari) I bet he wouldn't have left his house.
I suppose he could have got a Gameboy and done both.
