As the birthday celebration of the invisible being’s son of legend approaches, I find myself void of festive feelings. How to festive up?

Some perfunctory online shopping was executed at lunchtime. No score.

I observed the Town lights on the way home. Needle barely registered. Have they been up since last year?

Works festive piss-up approaches. Will be going sober due to location fecking miles from home, and a nagging lack of trust in self discipline at a free bar. Plus you should avoid getting drunk with people you work with. The potential for lurching disaster is all there. The truth may out from loosened tongues.

Closest so far is festive aroma from pine tree in reception at work. Most evocative of proper childhood Christmas past. But stuck in place of daily toil, seems wrong. However, our home tree does not go up until close to the event, and it lives in a box in the loft, and so only smells of dust so it’s unlikely to fix the mood.

Maybe I could douse it with pine disinfectant. But then it would probably only smell like an accident in a retirement home.
The way I feel, if I went to a 24hr Tesco now, post 10pm to get some Christmas booze shopping done, I’d make a start on it straight away, having wheeled a trolley round a deserted over-lit shed strewn with Eastern Europeans and bored staff stacking shelves, whilst Noddy Holder shouts 70’s yuletide musings over the P.A. System.
Then on to the soulless self checkout, where my only interaction is with the short tempered helper to swipe their approval for my alcohol laden cargo.
Fuck it. I’m off to bed.
Try again tomorrow…