I'm driving with Dad through the West End of Aberdeen at night, looking out the passenger window. Joni Mitchell's River is on the radio, and I'm counting Christmas trees silently as we go by houses. There's a quiet union between the twinkling lights and the music as we pass through the dark streets. This is a moment, I think. I turn my gaze inward and ask myself if I feel Christmassy yet. Surely I must feel a bit of it now, surely.
The funny thing is, I've been experiencing Christmas every single day at work. I only have to cast my mind back a few hours to hear the echoing snap of crackers, the rustle of paper hats… Turkey for lunch. Leftover Christmas puddings to steal a spoonful of (or several. or - heck - just give me the damn bowl and i'll tip the rest into my mouth whY DOES IT TASTE SO GO oD!?). Endless drink orders. Every conceivable Christmas song on repeat. Michael Bublé. Michael Bublé. Michael Bloody Bublé.
(…or is he UNSTOPPABUBLÉ???? I'll, uh, I'll show myself out, then...)
So I've been kinda desensitised to the whole thing, really. HOWEVER, I must confess that something happened inside my head when I was working the late shift at work, last weekend.
It was about 2 in the morning when Fairytale of New York came on. I rolled my eyes and told my co-worker that the song was totally overrated. He laughed and shook his head, "this is my favourite Christmas song. This is the one where they slag each other off, right? It's my favourite!" We were in the process of setting up for lunch service the next day, which was a bit difficult considering the smattering of drunk people all around the restaurant. As the song began, I was scooping up empty glasses and dodging revellers. My tray bumped against the elbow of a large man who was halfway through gesticulating - I caught the falling martini glass by it's stem, grumbling. Here I was, working my ass off while everyone else was out partying and celebrating Christmas.
But as Shane MacGowan's voice grumbled through the opening verse, I could feel some kind of festive ghost of Christmas Immigrants Past creep over me - I could see the snow falling in Manhattan, and hear the displaced roars of the Irish in crowded pubs. I could feel what it was like to be young and poor, separated from my hometown by the Atlantic Sea, placing all my hopes and dreams on an iconic city, which turned to be as harsh as the winter it hosted each year. It was romantic, and it took a hold of me as I swept through the singing crowd. Something about it all - the work, the night, the song, the atmosphere - came together in a way that made me turn to my coworker and say, "okay, I've decided: tonight, I like this song."
So maybe the Christmas feeling was creeping up on me, in a way.
Life has mostly been 'The Restaurant'-oriented as of late. Highlights include almost-convincing a Texan that our haggis was free-range and caught "just this morning!", as well as the Christmas pub crawl.
The Restaurant staff had a Christmas shindig on Sunday evening, which was, in a word, heavy. I woke up the next morning - eh, afternoon - in a state of, well, actually, just a state. But it was good. I cast my fuzzy mind back to the events of the night before. Aoow yeayuh, I thought, smiling to myself (because I'm a creep and talk like Lil Jon when I reflect on my romantic conquests).
Kissing in clubs is one of those things that just happen without you even realising what's going on - one moment everyone's dancing and then there's one face that is zooming into your face and there's a quick agreement in that moment between the faces and then BAM! KISSING! I like it because it gets the initial awkwardness out the way and then there can be a wee contract established between your faces for the rest of the evening. It says: "hello, my face is totally approachable for inter-facial* activities for the rest of the evening".
Other good bits:
- Being interrogated by the Chef De Partie on why I decided to present myself as the University-Graduate Know-It-All when I started work, only to prove that I couldn't even sustain myself to read more than three pages of a book I was lent. I remember standing with him and a curious Irish philosophy student, admitting, like a soul under the pressure of the Spanish Inquisition, "OK, I JUST DON'T REALLY LIKE READING".
- Repeating the main refrain of Bruce Channel's Hey! Baby in my most laddish, Scottish voice ad infinitum after the club turned its lights on with about 300 other people, jumping up and down like excited molecules in a chemical reaction
- Cheering our bar supervisor as he crashed the stage of a local band and proceeded to do a rap version of Oasis' Wonderwall (there's nothing else I can say about that apart from that it just was a thing that happened)
Finally, at the end of the night, I was revising several final clauses of the face contract (ahem) at the top of Union Street. It was six in the morning. "On Tuesday," he said, "come to Siberia." He was talking about a bar in town, but I like to pretend that with those words snow suddenly descended from the heavens and I was wearing a fur stole. He was Dr Zhivago and we were escaping the tumult of the Revolutionary Wars. "Come to Siberia, Lara!" he pleaded with me, his magnificent moustache quivering with longing**.
Alas, it wasn't that kinda deal. It was more like the top end of Union Street with a few early seagulls swinging their way through the dark sky and taxis passing by for airport runs. Aberdeen, eh?
That night, after a day of much-needed recovery (mostly consisting of listening to Beyonce's new album in bed), I was lying in bed, dozing, letting thoughts skate through my head. My mind manifested itself as Ice-Skating-Heart-Breaking Jeffrey Buttle, and scooted up to me with a neat triple axel: "hey, you know it's only a month until you leave for Canada! That's only four weeks! …four weeks! …four weeks! …four weeks! …four weeks!…"
FOUR WEEKS.
My eyes shot open. I stared at my dark ceiling. "Time is running out!", imaginary Jeffrey Buttle cackled as he skated away into the aether. I listened to the wind rattling my bedroom window and tried to settle down again, but it was difficult.
Four weeks.
***
* for the purposes of this post, I Googled "interfacial" and laughed because interfacial tension is a real SCIENCE THING, and is apparently a the measurement of excess energy at the meeting point between two, er, things, of different, ah, states. I think. ANYWAY I prefer interfacial tension to be the few final moments between two people's faces before they kiss. Because that's much more exciting. Or maybe interfacial tension (the sciencey version) is exciting. Is it? Scientists, get back to me on that one.
**QUIVERING WITH LONGING!!! i have never been more proud of a sentence in my LIFE
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