Would I, as a single person who lives alone (not with any humans, at any rate), prefer to be wrapped in the warm bosom of my family this Christmas? Do I envy the mummy in the Asda ad who does all the preparations on her own before sitting down (on a too-low pouffe) at the head of a groaning table that houses her ungrateful, animal fat-ingesting brood?
Or the mum in the Morrisons ad, with not mere bags but rather Mulberry totes under her eyes, who wrestles a decapitated turkey in a boxing ring (how cruel and disrespectful; not to the woman, but to the bird!) and needs many extra pairs of hands, like a Hindu goddess, to put crosses in the base of sprouts?
Or the wife in the winter Boots ad, who does up her husband’s duffel coat and inserts a nasal spray into his nostrils, as though he were a giant toddler?
Enlarge Liz will not be celebrating Christmas with her family this year (file picture) and is happy there will be no washing-up, no grease and no arguments
Remember, it used to be Malcolm in the nasal spray ads, waited upon by his mother.
Now, it seems, it’s the wives who have taken on that role; the grans are probably too busy being unpaid nannies so the mums can go to work and drink lattes, or they have descended into dementia because their adult children are so selfish and unstimulating.
Last year, we had the Boots Christmas ad where women on a housing close, styled to look like members of Charlie’s Angels, albeit with a much higher Body Mass Index, furtively wrapped presents and decorated trees and forged signatures on Christmas cards so their husbands and children wouldn’t be disturbed.
And would I want a child, like the insipid one in the Iceland ad, who wafts among intensively reared duck canapes, as though she were Alice and this were wonderland? It used to be that children dreamed of lions and Cheshire cats; now it is disgusting processed food for a pound.
'Do I envy the mummy in the Asda ad who does all the preparations on her own...?' asks Liz JonesKirstie Allsopp, who not too long ago telephoned this newspaper and asked, in clipped, Celia Johnson tones, if ‘Liz could please stop being mean about me in print’ (I wrote that she had no need to wear a real fur hat to ride her toboggan, as ‘surely her fat should keep her warm’), really takes the handmade, over-embellished-with-edible-baubles biscuit (just buy a packet!!!).
Last week (I know I shouldn’t watch her vintage Christmas DIY show, but it’s as addictive as crack cocaine in its awfulness), she actually made her own bauble for her tree and covered it in old buttons from her button box. (‘Everyone should have a button box!’ she cooed. How old are you, six?)
The women she comes across in her programme, filmed at her second home in Devon, all floral tea dresses, wicker baskets and disapproving air, are like the ones who hounded me out of Somerset: baking, well-covered recidivists (crimes against what, I hear you ask. Um, fashion, the environment . . . the list is endless) who have retreated to a world of Agas and cup cakes and gingerbread houses because they couldn’t hack it in the real world.
Liz Jones at her previous home in Somerset. She says she was 'hounded' out by the locals More from Liz Jones Column... I was sexually abused by boys at the age of nine (...try blaming the internet for THAT) 25/05/13 LIZ JONES: Clegg's right for once (just ask the tot snoring in the dog bowl) 12/05/13 LIZ JONES: Men in suits vs angry grannies (I know who my money's on) 05/05/13 Liz Jones: Pay an extra 80p - and you'll buy much more than a pair of jeans 27/04/13 Liz Jones: In which I call him a cab 24/04/13 LIZ JONES: Think death is cruel? Then try 'not dying' like my mother 21/04/13 Liz Jones's diary: In which there’s a family crisis 17/04/13 LIZ JONES: It's not Botox that stops me smiling - it's patronising men 13/04/13 Liz Jones's diary: In which I tackle my debts 09/04/13 VIEW FULL ARCHIVENo wonder their children take drugs in car parks and leave school at 16.
I had a friend round to my new house for dinner last night. She is also single, and lives alone. She thinks this year Christmas is a season of bad will.
‘It’s not inclusive,’ she said, over vegan curry.
‘All anyone thinks of, especially mothers, is their own nuclear family. And food.
‘Everyone is shut away inside their houses, celebrating how clever they are to have divided a few cells inside their wombs and whizzed round Sainsbury’s using their husband’s PIN number and accumulated child support.’
Yes! Those of us who live alone are not bitter, rather we are tired of getting virtual Christmas cards via email, showing photos of children we have never met hoisted on shoulders of dads who are probably having affairs with women who have never so much as owned a wooden spoon.
I have just replied to one such virtual card with the following cross email: ‘Who are all these people? Who in God’s name is Nick?’
I got this back. ‘My husband.’
‘Well, if I have never met him, why is he wishing me a happy Christmas?’ Silence followed that particular missive.
Bah! Humbug! And a merry Christmas to all those other misfits out there!
Just think. No washing-up in two days’ time! No grease. No arguments. Hurrah for singletons at Christmas!
