last word
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THE CHRISTMAS GARAGE PART II
n December’s issue I introduced you to the phenomenon that is The Christmas Garage (as before now known as TCG). For those of you that didn’t read it, a small minority I know, it is the concept of filling up a part of your house, in my case the garage, with Christmas goodies, starting in late November, in the lame attempt to be ready for the festive season and thence not have to splurge at an already expensive time. I say ‘lame attempt’ because inevitably many trips to TCG will be made before the big day thus depleting the stock of Matchmakers, Elizabeth Shaw mints etc and it ends up costing you far more than you would have ever spent if you had just done a big shop a week before!
longer will I be urged to “Pop to the garage and get a little something to keep us going?”. Not unless we are doing some DIY anyway. And, if you’ve read more than a few of my pieces you’ll know that will not be anywhere near as much fun as chowing down on a Terry’s Chocolate Orange or loading up a Chilli Heatwave Dorito with some Christmassy dip and firing it down your throat!! No, TCG is no more and we are back to having to watch what we eat and be sensible (boring?) with our calorie intake. I guess it makes sense only having TCG for a little while. If I had one all year round I’m fairly certain, after eating all the lovely things, I’d struggle to get
“I’m trying to think what the earliest date I could start stocking up TCG for 2022 would be? Might I get away with lateOctober?” Well this week, I am writing this in mid-January, dawned a very, very sad day!! The absolute final thing from TCG was taken off the shelf. Just a month ago it was lovely and pretty, laden with colourful, sparkly boxes containing a myriad of treats, savoury and (mostly) sweet, winking at me and saying “Pick me! Pick me!” every time I went in. Now it’s just two bare shelves waiting for some functional (and ultimately very boring) boxes of screws/rawlplugs/badly-folded-andpotentially-leaky-paddling-pools to be put back where they belong. No 66 THEWESTWILTSMAGAZINE
through the door… mind you I’d probably still have one given the choice!! I’m trying to think what the earliest date I could start stocking up TCG for 2022 would be? Might I get away with late-October? People are just about starting to think about Christmas then but I’m certain that would be the earliest. Pubs and restaurants, though, have to start thinking about menus and bookings etc in July/August and if you want to make sure you get your office Christmas party in the place you want you need to be booking it in September, at the latest, so
maybe I could extend it back to the beginning of autumn… I’m sure I could get away with that!! One final thought to cheer you all up… from 1 February it’s only 327 sleeps until the big day… I, for one, can’t wait. Phil Rockliffe
