It’s 6.00pm on Saturday 6th November and I’m in the heart of Bristol’s Broadmead shopping centre. The annual Christmas market has arrived and there are what feels like thousands of people milling around German offal fat tube outlets and various other food stalls offering the cheery prospect of artery blocking high sugar, high fat foods. And at the actual heart of the market is the Jäger Barn Bar, a pop up faux German boozer serving up beers from plastic glasses that actual Germans would never touch. But hey, it’s 6th November. Let the Christmas jollity begin.
As I arrive, the Jäger Barn Bar is pumping out The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, a song I have heard too often to enjoy, followed by Cliff Richard’s full frontal assault on your senses, Mistletoe And Wine, a song I had heard too much within a second of hearing it for the first time. Things can only get worse and so they do.
Soon we’re into Band Aid’s noble wish to “Feed The World”, which induces a loud and very drunken singalong from those in the bar. “And tonight, thank God, it’s them instead of you” was always a curious line in itself but belted out by a large crowd, high on mulled cider and Bratwurst, doesn’t seem to be an actual reflection of what Bob Geldof and that man Ure (Midge, that is) actually meant. But still, it’s Christmas time, eh?
And so it goes on, with the bouncers ejecting the very drunk from the bar and refusing entry to the under-aged who should have been grateful to be turned away. It feels as German as cricket itself.
Several feet away from this riotous celebration of the birth of the Baby Jesus (yeah right), hidden away from the bright lights, are Bristol’s forgotten many, the homeless. Snuggled up in doorways, sheltering from the cold and rain, no one seems to notice them. I walk past a few feeling curiously guilty. One man has a cardboard sign in front of him which says that he is an ex soldier and can we please help him with a few bob to help him get somewhere warm to stay tonight. I take his word for it that he really is ex military – why would he make up something like that? – and wonder what the hell is going on in our country? Feed the world? Well, yes we should, which is why I am so disgusted by Al ‘You Can Call Me Boris’ Johnson and Brand Rishi for slashing overseas aid to the very poorest. Some argue against overseas aid, arguing that we should first “look after our own”, but our own what? Our own homeless, our own working poor, our own children going hungry? “And tonight, thank God, it’s them instead of you”. We don’t even try to look after our own.
There’s about eight weeks of this shit before Christmas is actually here and I’ll be glad when this tawdry stuff is out of the way. Like Tim Minchin, I really like Christmas. I am with the ones I love and nothing matters more than that. But eight more weeks of Feed The Fucking World, Bratwurst, Children singing Christian rhymes, mulled cider, the John Lewis Christmas advert and Jona Lewis’s (real name John Lewis) Stop The Cavalry will send me closer than ever to the funny farm.
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