See This? I fuckin...

...made it myself.

This festive, seasonal table centre, how bourgois, how middle class, how...

Traditional.

Arse.

When I was a chap, we robbed our Christmas trees, in the dark, with bushman saws, and I have the scars to prove it.

I do remember making ceiling decorations (we were posh Irish, we had a roof) with yards of crepe paper (probably stolen too).

The Ma stayed off the medication long enough to go to the Rathineska Goose Club Raffle, and brought the dinner home, dead or alive (but too frequently alive, and thats a blip in itself)

Christmas Day, my mate Colm Somers (where are you now, brother, and did the eccentric sleeping excerises ever make you taller?) would call in the afternoon, and we would drink tea (HAHAHA!, sorry, Mammy), play cards and toast our toes.

On St Stephens Day, off to Abbeyleix to follow the hunt, but really to get pissed in Morrisseys, and try to shift, later, in the Rugby Club Disco.

It all seemed so complicated then- does she like me? will she kiss me? how the fuck am I getting home?

Ride me sideways, the questions havent changed much in twenty years, have they?

And Im still stealing (or at least not paying for) Christmas trees, and still making my own .....way.