NOVEMBER BLUES... AND BROWNS, REDS AND ORANGES TOO... BY SANDRA HARRIS.

NOVEMBER BLUES... AND BROWNS, REDS AND ORANGES TOO…

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I have the November Blues. It happens every year at the same time. Yes, November, lol. I know some people who love November because they’re looking forward to Christmas so much, but, to me, November is kind of a ‘meh’ month.

I’m usually tired, for one thing, after all the effort I put into making Halloween the best time of the year. I love September and October, with the brown and red and orange foliage and falling leaves and glorious early sunsets. Also, there are the films…!

HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN 3, THE THING, THE FOG, THE SHINING, THE CHANGELING, THE HAUNTING, PSYCHO, THE BIRDS, these are all on my regular Halloween go-to list and they literally just improve with age. I never get tired of watching these classics by terrific directors such as John Carpenter, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock.

Then there’s the best film Hammer never made, the superb horror comedy CARRY ON SCREAMING, with the gorgeously sexy Fenella Fielding as Valeria Watt and a brilliant cast of CARRY ON regulars in attendance to boot.

We always watch my son’s three favourite spooky films for Halloween as well: VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED and CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED, plus the sublime SHAUN OF THE DEAD. That bit when they’re deciding which records to throw at the zombies and discussing the merits of each in the midst of a zombie apocalypse always cracks me up.

So, Halloween is over now for another year and that’s the problem. And I’m in no way in the mood for Christmas yet. The trouble is, the rest of the world, including my beloved Netflix, has already moved on and is in full Christmas mood since even before November the first.

Am I the sole voice prepared to speak up and say it’s too early? Even if I’m not, the world of retail and advertising has already gone full Christmas. A Kevin the Carrot (ALDI) Christmas ad on TV in the first week of November? Give me a bleedin’ break.

What used to make Christmas special in the old days was the fact that some of my favourite ads didn’t come on the TV until the week or two before the Big Day. But queuing at the bank or post office to the strains of Walking in the Air in early November just gives me a pain in my proverbial.

What Crimbo ads do you like? I love the quiet, snow-filled Guinness ad with the fox and the closed pub, and the one for McDonald’s featuring a silent, closed McDonald’s and the slogan that never fails to make me cry: We know that the best place to be on Christmas Day is in your own home. Great, I’m bawling like a baby now. These ads know exactly how to hit you in the feels.

Nowadays, if you go into town on the week leading up to Christmas, you’ll find that all the Christmas stuff is gone and the shops are all gearing up for the January sales. Then the Cadbury’s Crème Eggs appear at the checkout and then the Valentine’s Day cards and, before you know it, we’re back on that whole moving-at-the-speed-of-light merry-go-round of another year, clinging on for dear life so we don’t get left behind.

I can’t say it was a bad year for my family as no-one got really sick and there were no major accidents, thank God. September and October were largely taken up with a faulty, twenty-four-year-old boiler that ultimately needed replacing. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble it is to actually do that.

I documented it. It took nine men, six visits and eleven man-hours overall from start to finish. I swear to God I’m not kidding. We were just relieved when it was all over. And the hot water is much hotter than it used to be, so that’s good.

Writing-wise, I brought out a book of weird, quirky very short stories earlier in the year, and I’m on course to finish a novella about a writing class at the end of November, hopefully. Rather than trying to rush it out for Christmas, I think I’ll leave it for a while and then come back to edit it in the New Year with fresh eyes.

The main thing about this year for us was the state of the outside world. Some truly awful things happened, and some other awful things continued happening, like the war in Gaza and the war between Ukraine and Russia.

American President Joe Biden was accused of funding the genocide in Gaza but he changed nothing, as far as I know, and now Donald Trump is the President Elect and we don’t have a clue yet how he’ll deal with these two wars.

Then there was the horrific flooding in Spain that made hundreds of people homeless, and a load of other natural disasters like fires and floods that you just know have got to be caused by climate change. How we’ll fare when the President Elect of America, a non-believer in climate change, eventually takes office officially, I just don’t know.

Then there’s all the knife crime, drug dealing and racism rows, plus bad governments (ours) who spend nearly half a million quid on a stupid bike shed for government ministers but can’t seem to figure out how to get our poor homeless people off the streets and into warm, dry homes for the winter. Yes, we have a General Erection in two weeks but, as a country, we’re hopeless ‘sheeples’… we’ll only vote the buggers back in again…! 😉

Finally, probably the biggest disappointment of the year was ABBA not performing live at Eurovision for their own fiftieth anniversary, and none of them was ill or discombobulated in any way as far as we’d heard. Humph. I was miffed as hell by that. Think you’re too good for your public, eh? We made you, ABBA…

A funny story to finish, one of the many laughs of the year. On my daughter’s recent visit to Sweden, the tour guide told the bus full of tourists that, if they looked to their left, they would see the studio where Benny and Bjorn from ABBA worked on writing and recording their music. And, if they were lucky, the two music maestros might be in there even now, writing a hit record.

Twenty-something heads obediently and excitedly turned to the left and twenty-something camera phones duly snapped photos of the shuttered, darkened and clearly empty building. Well, you just never know, do you? Anyway, Happy November to you all and, if you’ve got the November Blues like me, just remember, this too shall pass…