As for my Christmas shopping, it’s like a military operation. It takes some planning. I make a list of everything and then just have a whole day where I shop. And I like proper wrapping. Sometimes I spend more on the wrapping than the actual present for the person.
I have a theme to my wrapping every year. So last year it was brown paper with ribbon. I also made a little stamp saying ‘Scarlett’, so I could stamp every present. Yes, I get carried away.
I’ve normally got it all done by the first of December, and I always go really overboard with my little sister. In the past, I’ve got her things like a trip to Disneyland Paris, iPads, dressing tables. So she gets a big present off me and a big present off my mam and dad. I do treat her like she’s my child. Obviously it had to be an online shopping trip the year of the jungle win as I had like five days to get presents bought and to try and get over the jet-lag.
We have a ritual on Christmas Eve. Ever since I was little, my mam has given us all new pyjamas. We’re allowed to open one present every Christmas Eve, but obviously it’s the pyjamas. Every year my mam will say, ‘Oh no, not that one, not that one. What about the present wrapped in Disney princess paper?’ And every year me and Ava just say, ‘Mam just give us the present that you want us to open.’ And it’s always the new pyjamas.
For the last three years, these have been matching onesies. Last year Ava and I got matching Pokémon onesies. We were both Pikachu. As well as the matching onesies, we got new slippers and dressing gowns. Our mam gets new ones as well. That way, we’re all ready for Santa.
Then we always have a Christmas Eve buffet. It always has to be the same: pickled onions, sandwiches, garlic bread, chips and dips, mince pies and pizza (that’s been stood there for about three hours, so it’s freezing). Then we all sit down together to watch The Grinch in our new pyjamas.
I like Christmas to be very traditional. One year, my mam wanted a trendy black Christmas tree. But my dad, my sister and I like a tacky Christmas. You know the sort of thing – loads of lights, stickers on the window, tinsel that doesn’t have to match, baubles of every colour, and those plastic little Santas that look like they’re coming down the chimney. Stuff like that everywhere. Even in the bathroom, just stuck everywhere.
Whereas my mam wants everything to be coordinated. When we had done our living room out in that haphazard way, she said, ‘I’m going to get a black Christmas tree.’
‘What?’
‘Well, it will match with other things.’
‘But things don’t have to match at Christmas, Mam. What will Santa think?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘No, what will Santa think if he comes down that chimney and he sees a black Christmas tree?’
‘But he’s not real!’
‘La, la, la. I don’t want to hear that in our house. He is real.’
Then there’s the ritual on Christmas Day. At least fifteen of us always go to my nanny Christine’s house. My nanny’s house is quite small, and she only has a table with four chairs. So the kids are sat eating their Christmas dinner on the stairs and on the floor.
But I wouldn’t have it any other way, even though it is organised chaos and by the time the mashed potato comes out, everything else is cold.
Grandad, my nanny and my uncle Mark do the cooking. They all chip in. But our family doesn’t get involved in that at all. Definitely not. We just sit back and get drunk.
Sometimes we bring condiments. So we’ll do the cranberry sauce and mint sauce, but that literally is it. We also bring the booze, which is the most important bit, I think. We always buy a lot of booze. Baileys, obviously, loads of wine, Prosecco, Bucks Fizz.
After the lunch, we always put the telly on, have a sit around and just chat. By this time, my nanny’s a bit tipsy, and she’ll put Jive Bunny on. The ‘Jive Bunny Megamix’. It’s always the same. It begins, ‘Come on everybody, come on everybody.’
‘Now the party starts!’ we shout, and so we drink some more.
Then we just play loads of games. We’ll play bingo for money. We have an actual spinning bingo machine, and my nanny brings out the tickets. It’s twenty pence for one and a pound for a strip. The prize for a full house is normally at least a fiver. So you have to be prepared to flash the cash.
After that, we play a quiz which my nanny sets every year. We normally get a lot of questions on Carry On movies. That is her favourite subject. So a couple of days before, you catch up on all the lines in the Carry On films.
But the ridiculous thing is, even though she sets all the questions, my nanny still joins in the quizzes. We split into teams, and every year we’re like, ‘You can’t join in, Nanny, because you know all the answers!’
Nanny replies, ‘Oh, I can’t remember the bloody answers.’
‘But you’ve just written them all!’ And somehow her team always wins.
She divides the quiz up into actual sections, so she’ll have a Carry On section and the next section will be pop music of the sixties. Every section is about her era, basically, so we’re all just looking at each other, as if to say, ‘What?’
After the quiz, we play this accent game. One person is given a movie quote. They have got to say it in a certain accent, and then the others have to guess the accent. My uncle Mark’s the funniest. He’s just so bad. Everything sounds Welsh.
He’s like, ‘No, it’s Jamaican.’
‘Then why do you sound Welsh?’
Loads of funny things always happen at my nanny’s house on Christmas Day. One year my mam was sat on the edge of the couch and when she moved, the whole arm of the chair came off. She was like, ‘Oh my God.’
‘Prop it up, prop it up,’ I said.
So she got loads of Argos catalogues and propped it up. Then when everyone came and sat down, my mam said to my dad, ‘Sit there if you want.’ So he sat down, leaned on the arm and it fell off.
He got the blame. My nanny went mental at him. She was like, ‘Mark, what have you done?’
‘I don’t know my own strength, Christine.’
My mam and I were just looking at each other, thinking, ‘We can never discuss this.’ Except when I put it in this book.
Then at about eight o’clock on Christmas evening, we go back home and just chill on the couch. We end the day with a kebab or a Chinese. They deliver kebabs and Chinese on Christmas Day. That’s why Bishop Auckland, our town, is known as ‘Bish Vegas’. Maybe because it’s so glamorous, or maybe because it’s got a lot of slot machines!
Boxing Day is just as much fun. Normally everyone comes round our house, and my mam does a buffet with lots of drink. We have pies, sausage rolls, vol-au-vents. We have a sort of open house policy where people just turn up. It’s really nice.
Of course, a lot of the food is frozen, but my mam will say that it isn’t. She’ll tell me, ‘Oh, I just took these sausage rolls out of the oven.’
And I’ll say, ‘Yes, but you’ve just put them in the oven from the bag.’
‘Well, no one needs to know that.’
‘I think they’re going to know that you haven’t been up this morning at 4 a.m. making your own pastry. Mam, we know you!’
I have lots of favourite memories from Christmases past. One of the best ones was when my grandad was pretty drunk. He was like bouncing up and down on a wired fireguard and he was singing ‘Yellow Submarine’. But instead of ‘We all live in a yellow submarine’, he was singing, ‘We all live in a green tambourine.’
He got everything right – except the colour and the object! He really didn’t realise, but we all started joining in anyway: ‘We all live in a green tambourine.’ I always remember that because we were all crying with laughter.
I also have very fond memories of lots of family games at Christmas. Sometimes we play on SingStar, and that always causes arguments. When people lose, they go, ‘Well, I should have got better marks than that!’
And I say to them, ‘It’s just a game. It’s for fun and it’s for kids.’ These people ar
e all forty plus, so they should just calm down.
However, drink and games do not always mix very well, especially when you’re playing Trivial Pursuit. That always causes rows. Oh my God, I remember once we were playing and my uncle Daniel literally threatened to leave. He was like, ‘Well, if people aren’t going to start playing fair, I’m getting up and I’m walking out.’
After that, it was a bit awkward. We were like, ‘We should probably just stop playing.’ It wasn’t really in the spirit of Christmas.
Another funny aspect is because we all take a load of presents round to my nanny’s, we all end up going home with the wrong presents. We sometimes even end up with our own presents that we’d given to someone else.
We just put all the presents in different bags. At the end, you’re like, ‘I’m sure I had a £50 gift card from Next.’ But you never see that again. You wind up with a toast rack instead.
On a more positive note, you can also end up with fifty selection boxes of chocolates. That’s one of the things I love about Christmas. Normally chocolate bars are 70p each, but at Christmas time selection boxes are a quid from the pound shop and so you get five bars at 20p each. Woo hoo!
Christmas is also an excuse to eat your own bodyweight in Ferrero Rochers. If it was happening in April, everyone would ask, ‘Why are you eating a whole box of Ferrero Rochers on your own?’ But if you do it at Christmas, no one bats an eyelid. They’re like, ‘What’s that? Ferrero Rocher? Can I have one? Can I have a whole packet?’
At any other time of the year, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, that is just pure greed.’ But at Christmas, no one cares. You can eat five selection boxes on the trot and half a litre of Baileys, and no one judges you. It’s the only time of the year that that’s appropriate. In fact, it’s encouraged. It’s almost the law. If you’re not doing that, you’re doing Christmas wrong, in my eyes.
Looking back, my all-time favourite Christmas present was a Cabbage Patch Kid because I had just wanted one for so long. When we lived in Shildon, Santa used to come round the streets and ask all the kids what they wanted for Christmas. It was honestly amazing.
So you’d hear a bell and there’d be Christmas music, and Santa would suddenly come into the street on a float. All the kids would be stood outside waiting. Once you could hear the bell, you’d be like, ‘Oh my God, he’s coming, he’s coming!’
One year, I met Santa in the street, and he asked me, ‘What do you want for Christmas?’
‘A Cabbage Patch Kid, please.’ And obviously, the next day I got one. I remember thinking, ‘Oh thank you, Santa. You listened!’
A few weeks before the big day, I’d always write a wish list for my parents, or I would get the Argos catalogue and just circle everything. My mam would be like, ‘Pick ten presents that you really want, put a star next to them, and just circle another ten in case Santa can’t get the ones with the stars next to them.’
But I’d just be like flicking through and saying, ‘Want that, and that and that.’ In the end, I circled everything in the toy section.
One year I remember getting a toy kitchen. It had a little microwave and little pretend pans and pretend slices of pizza. I was always playing on that. I think that is the only time that I’ve ever enjoyed spending time in the kitchen. It’s certainly the only time that my mam has ever heard me say, ‘Do you want some food?’ All she hears now is: ‘Can I order you something?’
I bet she’s like, ‘Where’s that little girl gone, the girl who just loved to cook my pretend pizza in a pretend oven?’
The other Christmas present I loved was Mr Frosty. That was a snowman which made slushies. You’d put in ice and water and freeze it. Then you’d move Mr Frosty’s arm up and down, and it would make a slushy. Oh my God, that was amazing.
I loved things like that. I was such a geek as a kid, and now my little sister’s exactly the same, which I’m really pleased about. It means that now at Christmas I can give her those things as well. One year, for instance, I gave her a microscope.
I remember getting a microscope when I was younger. It had slides containing half-insects and stuff. Then I’d write down all my observations. Things like, ‘Fly, definitely dead. Chopped in half.’
I’d also get those chemistry kits where you could add bicarbonate of soda to water and observe the reaction. I’m delighted that my little sister likes things like that now.
In addition, every Christmas I got an art kit from Argos. You’d open it up and exclaim, ‘Oh my God, I’m like the real Neil Buchanan. I am from Art Attack.’ That’s how I felt when I got it.
At first, my parents would give me a big pad of A4 drawing paper, all wrapped up. I’d be over moon. ‘Yes, I know what’s coming next! I’ve got the paper, but I’ve got no art stuff.’
And then I’d open the next present, and it would have all the felt tips and the wax crayons and the stencils and the paint – which you were never allowed to use. Everything was circular. Oh my God, I used to love stuff like that.
I feel like actually now that’s what kids miss out on. Now it’s all about technology. It’s all about watching stuff on YouTube or iPads or laptops, whereas as a kid, I loved just drawing. I could spend hours doing that. I think that has been lost a bit.
Also, I feel we’ve lost our passion for actual board games. I remember getting really excited about Frustration and Mouse Trap. I’d always play those games and then give up halfway through. No one ever won, because you’d just get bored of it or have an argument.
I’d be thinking, ‘I’ve being playing Monopoly for three hours now – or is it three weeks?’ Or I’d be playing Cluedo and saying to myself, ‘I’m actually going to kill someone soon. Just pass me the lead pipe now. I’m going to be the one with the candlestick in this living room in a minute if we don’t stop playing this game. They solve real-life crimes quicker than we play this.’
I much prefer Christmas songs. My favourite is ‘All I Want for Christmas’. It’s one of those songs that when it comes on and you’re drunk and with all the girls, you’re all like, ‘Yeah!’ You think you can hit the high notes. You’re holding it and waving your fingers around. We’re all looking at each other, like, acknowledging each other and thinking, ‘We’re hitting the high notes, and we’re amazing.’
Every year, when I have a drunken sing-song with my friends like that, we all shout in unison, ‘We should form a band!’
Then the person who doesn’t think they are a good singer says, ‘I can be the manager!’
Someone else says, ‘I’ll be the roadie!’
‘And I can drive the van!’
And we’re all like, ‘Why have we never thought of it before? Why have we been ignoring this talent all these years?’
So we spend every Christmas thinking of a really shit girl band name. We always used to say that we would be called Girls Are Allowed. I’d say, ‘That’s amazing. The name is similar but not quite the same. Will people think we are a tribute band, Nicola?’
‘No, they’ll know that it’s not. It’s a totally original thing.’
‘I know. When we write “Girls Are Allowed”, we won’t actually use the word “are”, but the letter R, backwards. That’s really quirky: Girls R (backwards) Allowed.’
I always feel really blessed because I know that a lot of people don’t have that wonderful family and friend bonding time at Christmas. Sadly, these days that’s not always the case, is it? A lot of families split up and move away and lose touch sometimes as well.
Our Christmas is very informal. It’s not like we have to get dressed up or anything. We all just chill out in our comfies and slippers. But it’s still such a special time of year.
Even though our family meet all the time – it’s not like we haven’t seen each other all year – it still feels different at Christmas. My mam sees my auntie and my nanny every day, and whenever I’m home I always go and see them. But Christmas is something else. It’s also the time when it really brings it home that it’s just lovely to have
really close family. We are like the Brady Bunch and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It was bizarre after the jungle because everyone got swept up in the show, and as a result no one was very organised with Christmas. So we decided to eat out for Christmas dinner, something we had never done before (and will never be doing again). Although it was nice not doing any washing up, there’s something lovely about chaos at Christmas. I know the dream that is sold to you on the TV is being knee-deep in presents and expensive crackers, having a civilised turkey dinner with all the trimmings, then sitting by an open fire roasting chestnuts with a lavish tree sparkling with antique baubles in the background. But it’s just not Christmas for me and my family if everything goes to plan. Dare I say it, I missed eating cold mashed potato last Christmas. I missed not having enough elbow room to cut my meat up and banging into the person sat next to me, I missed being able to sit in my slippers and not be judged for it. In the words of my good friend (well, I feel like he is) Dr Seuss:
‘What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?’
Chapter Eighteen
LONDON AND ITS SMASHED AVOCADO
To pass the Knowledge, the insanely difficult London geography test required of black-cab drivers in the city, you must master 320 basic routes, all of the 25,000 streets that are scattered within those routes, and about 20,000 landmarks and places of interest within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross.
The word ‘avocado’ in Nahuatl Indian (Aztec) means ‘testicle’ because of its shape, so the word ‘guacamole’ literally translates as ‘testicle sauce’.
Cock Lane, near Holborn Viaduct, didn’t get its name due to any association with poultry, but because it was the only street to be licensed for prostitution in medieval times.
Tears streamed down my face.
‘Scarlett, what’s wrong?’ My mam, dad and Ava looked so concerned.
Me Life Story Page 18