Hamish Champ: Getting into the Festive Spirit. Not.
For reasons I won't bore you with I'm mostly trying to avoid Christmas this year. However it is a thankless task and, as you may well imagine given all the bleedin' decorations and trees everywhere, a nigh on impossible one.
Still, while I'm closing my eyes and sticking my fingers in my ears at least everyone else seems to be entering into the spirit of the season, certainly in the pubs I've been into recently.
But on the corporate front there is a lot of gloom 'n' doom about the place. For starters you've got more companies either going into or on the verge of going into administration - and I bet Punch Taverns can't wait to get those Orchid sites back! - while there are growing fears of a serious collapse in trade in the early part of next year.
Even at the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers' Christmas lunch last week the mood was definitely pretty darn sober, despite the lashings of free booze on offer.
I heard of one table of guests, made up of several pubco executives and suppliers, who made a pact amongst themselves not to talk 'shop' for the duration of the lunch for fear of sending everyone into a paroxym of depression.
Everyone says it's tough out there. Pubs are quieter at this time of year than they have been in years, so the anecdotal evidence reaching me has it. And we've got the joys of January and February to come!
Yet as I said, where I've seen people gathered to have a good time in one hostelry or other they seem to be making a pretty good fist of it.
And while I'm having little to do with the old 'Joyous Noel' this particular time around, may I take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry One. And bring on 2009!!!
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I was on the tube on Saturday night on my way to visit a chum in Norf London when the train's driver came onto the intercom just as we pulled up at Euston station. "To the young lady who stuck her arm out as we came into this station," he drawled, "please note that this a tube train, not a bus. You should have gone to Specsavers."
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Best Google News Headline of the Week: 'Vomiting pub hits Norwich prison'
