So - 'tis the season to be jolly is it? Well, not in the household of the Grumpy Old Man it isn't. In the case of the GOM, 'tis the season to have to put up with even deeper layers of vexation than usual, and the only thing worth celebrating is that it looks as though you might after all be surviving to the end of what has been another crap year.

Everything about Christmas gets up our snitches. Everything. From the breakfast telly presenters who tell us it's now just 120 shopping days to go, to the annual festive strike by airport baggage handlers. From office parties where drunken juniors have waited the whole year to tell you what 'the trouble with you is...', to parents videoing their precocious brats at the atrocious school nativity play where your kid is playing the part of the donkey's rear end. From the woman next door who drops in to show your wife the diamond ring her prat of a husband has bought her, to the 150th opportunity to see 'Whistle Down the Wind' on the telly.

And speaking of wind, there's the festive Xmas turkey that tastes like blotting paper soaked in a puddle and sends your digestive system to hell. And how on earth are we really supposed to look happy when someone buys us a tie with a picture of xxxxing Santa on it? Eh?

Read by Stuart Prebble

(p) 2007 Orion Publishing Group