[...] Soon it will be Christmas again. Christmas is ridiculous. The way it is exactly the same year after year is completely ridiculous. The same decorations, the same clothes, the same songs, the same food, the same sentiments – you spend the year trying to improve your lot in one way or another and at the end of it you get walloped with all this unvarying rubbish again, it’s horrible – what a really perverse way of ending a year. It’s tedious and asinine yet everyone is trapped in it because nobody wants to let anyone else down, though if you ask anyone they’ll likely tell you they’d be very happy to spend Christmas day with five types of cheese and the curtains drawn. [...]