Mellissa Flowerdew-Clarke

So, it’s New Year again, is it? It only feels like yesterday that I was slumped in front of the TV with a flaccid haggis on my lap, wishing Jools Holland would choke on his excessive saliva and do us all a favour. Is it just me, or is New Year one of the most anti-climatic, disappointing nights of the whole year? I’ve had more exciting leg cramps than the tosh we’re confronted with on an annual basis. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a few memorable New Year’s. 2009 was a cracker; I drunkenly pole danced in the local Yates’s, left with a handbag full of chicken drumsticks and awoke the next morning with a bruise on my thigh that looked like Elvis . Or 2006 –  the year when I spent the whole night putting sausage rolls in people’s shoes when they weren’t looking, and carved my name into a giant brie. The millennium was pretty good as well; I watched my brother piss on people’s car door handles, whilst his mate repeatedly kicked a tree.

So, will 2011 be a winner? Let me asses the options:

1. Go with mates to the local pub. Yes, the local pub which we go to on a weekly basis and always complain because the Strongbow tastes of tramp’s piss and the toilets are always flooded with bog water and floating tampons. So, yes, it’s an attractive offer. And, to make it even more orgasmic, it’ll cost me 15 quid to get in. And what will I get for my 15 quid? A party bag of used tampons and a dry hump from a chav named Kevin behind the Biffa bins. Tempting.
2. Go to a friend’s house for a civilised dinner party. Although it won’t be civilised, as we’ll all get outrageously pissed on neat gin and spend the evening either sobbing into each other’s bosoms, daring each other to pour candle wax on our nipples, or snogging the random next door neighbour behind the fridge when his wife’s not looking.  I’ll wake up on the floor with someone’s discarded knickers stuck to my face and last night’s ‘civilised’ menu of foie gras and cheese tuiles forcing its way through my nostrils in a torrent of sick. Again, very tempting. 
3.  Stay in with the family. A heart-warming choice. In theory. How warm and comforting it will be, as we welcome in 2012 with a hot toddy and burst of Auld Lang Syne. The Fathership will say his usual joke about the haggis being the secret  lovechild of Gail Porter and the Loch Ness Monster’s left testicle and we will laugh. Oh, how we will laugh.  We’ll sing along with Jools and enjoy the warmth of our family unit. Or not. In reality, the Fathership will be snoring on the sofa by 9.02pm; the Mothership will get in a humph because we’re making a mockery of “poor Gail’s alopecia”; and me and the brother will spend the rest of the evening emptying the drink’s cabinet and smoking in garden. We’ll toast in the New Year doing impressions of Willow and vomiting up sheep’s intestine in the flowerbed.  
4.  Spend it on Twitter. Now this could be interesting. I could spend my evening enviously eyeing all of the tweets from the happy fuckers who will genuinely believe they’re having a good time (until they wake up with a bloke named Bernard trying to force feed his neeps & tatties into their orifices).  Or, I could count the number of salacious tweets from frustrated housewives offering virtual sucks’n’fucks at the stroke of midnight, as their husbands stagnate in a pool of complacency. Hell, I could even post a picture of my tits. Why not? It is New Year after all.

Maybe I could combine all four? I’ll pop to the pub, down a pint of tramp’s piss and add my own sanitary wear to the bog buffet; I’ll post a pic on Twitter of my boobs smeared in haggis; and then head to my friend’s place just in time to pour vodka on my eyeball and snog Jeff from next door on the stroke of midnight. Perfect.

Happy fucking New Year, everyone.  Make sure you lubricate yourself well; I hear 2012 is planning to take us all hard and dry.

It’s three days before Christmas and, despite us agreeing to buy minimal gifts this year, the Yuletide Panic has descended. I’m frantically elbowing small children in the face as I force my way through the Christmas crowds of Grotford, searching for festive tat to pad out the measly offering of gifts I’ve already purchased. For me, it’s all about quantity over quality. BHS could be selling a frozen shit on a stick and I’d probably buy it right now.

Having kicked a granny in the shins and headbutted a toddler in my desperate panic to get within arm’s reach of the nearest shelf of festive pap, I snatch the first two things that grab my attention. What do I end up with? A novelty apron with giant tits on it and puncture repair kit. A fucking puncture repair kit. I don’t even know if they have a bike. It was a toss-up between that and a ceramic cock with a Santa’s hat on it.

Now, I could pop in to the middle-class warmth of M&S and buy a novelty reindeer torch with a built in compass for a fiver. But who wants to spend that on something that you know will end up in a bedside drawer for the rest of eternity; something so crap that it’s not even worth regurgitating as next year’s Secret Santa gift.  At least my cheapo stocking fillers can be thrown in the bin without a real sense of guilt.  I avoid the comforting glow of John Lewis and M&S and head for the high street, where a plethora of bargain basement stores awaits.

You see, this is what happens in a recession. The boutiques have been replaced with 99p stores. The independent craft stalls selling handmade gems of wool and wicker have been replaced with diamante Hello Kitty crap, shipped over from China. Even the local bakers has been replaced with a Greggs (now, I love a sausage roll as much as the next person, but I prefer mine to made at the hand of a pork-master, not a processed ball of scrotum and lips.)  

The empty high street stores have been replaced with a new breed of retailing – the pop-up shop. Poorly made vice-girl garments line the windows on mannequins that are always missing body parts and have a facial expression akin to being buggered by a donkey. The allure of the 1990s garage music blaring from the pop-up mobile phone stores is enough to make me want to pluck out my eyes and stick them in my ears. And that’s before I’ve even seen their chav-vom line of Ed Harvey iphone covers filling the shelves. There is always a whiff of desperation with these havens of retail shite –  buy your crap now, as the shop will be gone next week, once they’ve sold their last sweat-shop pashmina.

I will be eternally baffled by one such shop in Grotford that is selling not only cheap Christmas tat and children’s toys with loose parts that pose not only a choking hazard, but are an insult to any child with even the tiniest ‘shit-toy detector’, but also does a fantastic line in guns. And sex toys.  “Would you like an 14 inch Pussy-Punch dildo to go with your Santa mug, Madam. It’s only £1?” Oh, go on then, it’ll make a wonderful addition to Grandma’s stocking.