Luxembourg

Some things are nicer upside down. Last week I fell in the street outside Waterstone’s and the disgusting capitalist bookdump looked 90% nicer. Katie Price’s malfeasant turds steamed with more élan, as though her sickening assault on books was an illusion. Hey, I thought. Maybe life is worth living. Maybe I should keep writing stories no one reads for websites no one reads that pay nothing or working on a book that won’t be published because the publishing world is motivated by business not passion or love, and the whole soulless band of revolting succubi running the publishing houses will embrace me with open arms, and my sense of worth will balloon and my love for existence will attain new highs of smirking happiness and joy, and those hours sacrificing a paid career doing something proper that has left my CV in tatters will have paid off. Perhaps working in a world where bestsellers riddled with bad grammar written by rich twerps with no souls isn’t so bad, and taking great care with every word, trying to make something beautiful, something new and inventive, isn’t needed after all, perhaps I can scrape dandruff onto a sheet of paper and fax it to Jonathan Cape and tell the dolts it’s the newest thing baby, get with it. Perhaps if we shut up and stop chastising our mothers for reading Michael Macintyre or Dan Brown, we will harmonise as a species and the government will put money into the arts and people can do things other than making people buy drinks and food and clothes and crap and we can all move to Luxembourg and live happy in our wisdom.

Or not. It is that time of the year. The time to mix bleach with toothpaste and suck exhaust fumes. There is nothing good about December. Nothing. There is nothing good about our need to consume and shop and purchase, to gorge ourselves on useless items, to stuff ourselves with pap until we burst. Hate yourself. Everything about Christmas says: hate yourself. Hate the way the world has become. Hate that rancid bitch, Lady Capitalism. Hate your friends, lovers, dogs. Hate the whole bally thing. Buy chocolate. And hate. Buy more chocolate and sit there, gulping it down, belly distending as you hate, hate, hate, breaking off another square coz hey, why not, it’s Christmas after all.

I am boycotting everything this December. Everything. I refuse to do anything. I refuse to acknowledge the existence of pavements. I refuse to go sledding in thermals. I hate how Christmas boxes me in. Christmas is a manipulating force of evil that steals my freedom. It will vex me no longer with its shiny baubles and wintry claws. It cannot sell my heart!