Good Gravy!

Christmas is done and dusted, as the saying goes, for another year. Wrapping paper has been put in the recycling, and the book I bought myself with the gift card from my employer has been commenced by your blogger (it's Identity Crisis, the latest from Ben Elton, and it deals with the culture of the easily offended and hashtags). I had a very busy few days over Christmas and Boxing Day - I was rostered to work. When I was driving to a client's home, what should come on the radio but one of my favourite Christmas songs: How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly. You know something? I teared up a little as I was listening. The predicate and narrative of the song is a Lump-in-the-Throater: a first person account from a prisoner writing a letter home - he's going to miss Christmas with his family because he's in stir - and among other things, he gives his tips about how to make the gravy for Christmas lunch; apparently up to the offence that saw him serving a custodial sentence the gravy had been his task. Paul Kelly is a fantastic lyricist and his delivery in this song is superb, but then again, Kelly could sing the ingredients listed on the side of a cereal box and have you reaching for the tissues. Perhaps my emotion was due to missing my father, whose anniversary falls around now, and it's only been a few years since we lost him. He was very much in my mind as I worked. I guess Gravy makes the listener think of all the people who can't be with their family on Christmas Day. People such as emergency workers, hospital staff, and of course this year the volunteer fire fighters.

This means it's another year before we're bombarded with Christmas songs again. I will be safe to wheel my trolley down the aisle of the supermarket and not be subjected to Last Christmas by Wham. That song seriously sucks camels' balls, and it makes me want to puke like a demonically possessed adolescent girl everything it squirms its nauseating lyrics into my ears.

If Last Christmas has the power to irritate, so to does Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney.  It's such a nonsensical load of pointlessness, and it sets my teeth on edge. McCartney is partially responsible for some of the greatest popular songs every recorded, so what's the deal with this? Did somebody cut off the oxygen supply to his brain?

But anyway, as long as I've got Merry Christmas (War is Over) by Lennon et al, Rockin' Christmas by Ol' 55, Merry Christmas by Slade, and Paul Kelly's aforementioned number, I'm happy and know Christmas is here.

I know it's late, but Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, and may the good outweigh the bad.