Joy to the f**king world

It's the 3rd December and it's begun. The Christmas carols are ringing through every store doorway. Since early October, Xmas decorations have been hung in shop windows and all the way down Rundle Mall. And those vomit-inducing children's choirs are playing wherever you turn. YARGH! It's bad enough that the average shopper is subjected to the 800th version of Away in a Bloody Manager, sung in English, French, Cantonese and Swahili and arranged in all forms from country to calypso.

But this Xmas, when you sit snuggling up to your partner on a picnic rug listening to a half-assed church choir sing their versions of Carols By Candlelight, please spare a thought for us poor souls. The ones who have to play them! OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Ten verses....all the same....shudder!

Those Xmas Carol gigs. The first one begins today. And as if it isn't bad enough that it's a Christmas carol gig but it's a SCHOOL BAND doing it. My poor bleeding ears! The next one is NEXT Sunday ...then the Wednesday after that...and the week after that....Here we go!!!! I'm not looking forward to having to play 5 verses of one Xmas Carol in upteen flats on a piece of paper the size of a square of toilet paper in the freezing cold on the back of a tautliner. Every year I freeze my ass off, get bitten alive by mosquitoes and swallow about 10 moths that are attracted to the spotlights which never appear to be anywhere near our music. Not to mention nearly falling off the truck to my certain death. Or the ringing ears from the painfully bad voices of the selected church choir, led by one crap singer Rosie, all of whom THINK they can sing but only sound like cats in the process of being spayed! I'm praying for rain. One year it was cancelled. Oh what a day, what a perfect day...

I can cope with the Christmas songs - White Christmas, Jingle Bells, Frosty The Snowman, I Saw Mommy Porking Santa Claus.....but if I hear the First F**king Noel one more time....

I have no time to prepare myself for this - to build up my immune system to old ladies with warbling throats and children that use the candles to set alight their carols programme.

What is with this time of year making me feel slightly less clarinet-y.

So word of warning: If that bloody choir leader sings one more song in falsetto, I'll shove my clarinet right up her....