Pee/Green

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Christmas in Britain starts on November 1st. Well, it does on TV, with nonstop crappy adverts for crappy products. But in real life it starts around December 20th, when we all suddenly realise we've left it a bit late for presents and turkey and decorations, and cram into the shops to frantically buy stuff. It sort-of ends on December 27th, with everyone too exhausted and full of badly cooked food to be cheerful.

We then spend a week in purgatory, living on cold turkey sandwiches and leftover chocolates, slumped half comatose either in front of the TV or at work, vaguely waiting for New Year, which is a kind of miniature christmas which signals the return to normality.

In America I'm told it's different. On TV it starts cranking up sometime in June, but everyone ignores it until November. In real life they have Thanksgiving, followed sometimes by Hanukkah, followed by Christmas, followed by New Year. And then Chinese New Year if they can take it.

I found christmas exciting when I was young - that is, before I became too old and cynical for it at 7. Then there was two decades of going through the motions, each of us doing it only because the others seemed to want to.

Nowadays, the Kapitano household largely ignores christmas. There's a piece of 35 year old tinsel that we drape from the lights on December 24th, and a big meal with visiting family members on the 25th. I find I enjoy the family get-togethers a lot more now, seeing as most of my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents are either dead, senile in rest homes, or refusing to talk to each other for reasons no one can remember. Or living in Canada.

There's presents which we've opened at least a month in advance - this year it's a coffee percolator from mum and dad to themselves, and I'm thinking of getting myself a second hand camcorder from ebay.

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I saw Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" tonight, on the big screen. It was the prelude to a forum between four green-leaning experts from academia and government.

The film itself I highly recommend - it skims through most of the vast amount of the science and politics involved in climate change, in just enough depth to show the nature and extent of the problem, leaving no room for doubt that something must be done, and now.

Unfortunately, in the final minutes it falls apart when trying to say what must be done. After outlining a global catastrophe and it's causes, it recommends traveling by bicycle, writing to politicians, and holding debates. And praying.

The forum wasn't much better, with contributions from the floor ranging from "everyone should modify their cars to run on vegetable oil", through "if people only drove their cars less" to "the government needs to force us to recycle our waste".

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Afterwards, a not-strictly-necessary but most welcome curry. There was even entertainment laid on, as one customer kept trying to leave without paying his bill, before trying to fight his way out and ending up with two waiters sitting on him while the owner called the police.

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Just as I got home, I got a phone call from a man who said he was "feeling really randy".

Perhaps he should have mentioned that he's developed a new kink since we last met. Watersports. Yes, gentle reader, tonight, as the rain came down on us both in our secluded alleyway, he...rained on me. But he can't bring himself to admit that he likes doing it, or that it's deliberate.

Is everyone in this town a bit mad, or just the people I meet?

Anyway, excuse me while I find a new teeshirt.

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Next up, Saturday evening, a fundraiser for the Respect party. This involves taking some food to a community centre, paying to get in, eating each other's food, buying lottery tickets, being entertained by a short film (with Kapitano on hand to set up the DVD player), putting money in a collection bucket, closing the evening with a quiz, and going home having taken three hours to donate GBP20.

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