The Scratching Post

Valentine’s Day

Words fail to do justice to the odium I have for thisfarcical ritual. As a confirmed bachelor, it is always a considerable inconvenience to find my favourite restaurants occupied by courting couples dribbling all over each other, whilst I have to suffer the ignominy of having this nauseating charade forced upon me. 

Christmas: the hateful festive season in which parents notify their progenies that whilst they sleep a bearded old stranger will be entering their bedrooms unaccompanied. Indeed, there is much to detest about Yuletide, which is heralded by a) your cretinous neighbour festooning his bungalow in a myriad of nuclear-powered lights that are visible from space; b) the arrival of the obligatory round-robin letter from a self-righteous family you’ve long despised, whose insistence on putting their annual highlights on paper is absolutely galling (honestly, I couldn’t care less if Sebastian overcame his nut allergy or if Drusilla triumphed in the school egg-and-spoon race); and c) an influx of ludicrous perfume adverts that are completely unintelligible. And if that’s not traumatic enough, there’s always the maelstrom of monotonous music that makes you want to crush the larynx of mankind, as well as the pointless exchanging of gift-wrapped tat with fools you’d gladly have harpooned to their own Christmas trees.

But it’s the godawful food I find most offensive of all. No one should have turkey forced upon them, not even the feral cats that exist purely on a diet of polluted air and stagnant water. In all seriousness, I would sooner consume the grit that is unfortunate enough to line my litter tray. What’s wrong with a festive Côte de Boeuf washed down with a robust Château Latour ’82 for pity’s sake? I’m sure the Baby Jesus would have approved.

And just when you think it’s all over for another year, you wake up to Boxing Day – the day when the peasant underclass queue outside some wretched department store en masse in the hope of getting 20 per cent off matching pyjamas. Utter lunacy.