Upfront

BEING, AS IT IS, the ultimate beautiful distraction, Christmas timed its arrival perfectly this year. Elf on the TV, cards to write, boxes of decorations to sort, presents to buy or make: real-world avoidance is easier when your cupboards are full of Tunnock's tea cakes, there's red glitter all over the carpet and your rocking Santa ornament is singing a country'n'western version of Santa Clause (Is Coming to Town) from the sideboard.

The first distraction came when I went to visit the not-in-laws. They take the season very seriously in Portadown. If you are the kind of person who can’t stand endless Christmas music piped into shops, then you should stay well away. In Portadown, the in-store jingle bells are relentless and there is the addition of speakers high up on poles all along the main street blasting out snow- and mistletoe-related tunes. They act as a kind of benign Big Brother, forcing the community to get into the spirit of things: “Enjoy Christmas, buy more stuff and that’s a wee order, so it is.”

The Sally Army were shaking boxes in the supermarket, complete with a brass band. I spotted a human reindeer, and a lady Santa-dog-type creature wandering around the town, like something out of an old episode of Trigger Happy TV. There were beautiful, frankly odd distractions everywhere. My kind of town.

I was on the hunt for materials to make cards. The nice lady in the commercial card shop, where I bought an edible card for a canine of my acquaintance, told me to head to the craft shop in William Street, past the indoor market. When I got there the nice man told me they didn’t do crafts any more, just the fixings for making jewellery. “But,” he said, “we did sell all our stuff off to Desmond in the market so he might have some left.”

“Are you telling me that this Desmond character happens to have a barrow in the marketplace?” I asked, not daring to believe a scene from The White Album was about to be made manifest. “Yes,” says your man. “Like in the song?” I say. “I suppose so, yeah,” says your man.

I found him easily enough. He was sitting behind a stall that sold “Absolutely Everything”, fixing a watch for a woman. His tongue was poking out with the concentration of removing links from the silver watch. I thought of asking after Molly, but instead I said: “Hello Desmond, where’s all the craft stuff you bought from the shop that only sells beads and things now?” He stopped working on the watch and said the items I needed were in a few boxes at his feet. I spent the next half hour rummaging through them, finding every single thing I needed to make my cards for a fraction of the cost of buying them.

Thanks to the myriad distractions of Christmas there is finally something other than gloom on the television and the radio. Well, okay, we had The X Factor, but with Tescomary being forcibly removed from the competition by the judging panel (she got more votes than the excellent Cher as it turned out) even that escape route lost its lustre.

Matt Cardle’s winning song is kind of depressing too. Sample lyrics: “Cos when my back is turned/My bruises shine . . . When we collide we come together . . . I’ll take a bruise I know you’re worth it/When you hit me hit me hard”. It’s a Biffy Clyro song that includes words about sitting in a wishing hall and having Gilligan’s eyes, which are the most cryptic X Factor-winning lines ever sung. Nothing says Christmas like a song about bruises, I always say.

No wonder the nation has turned its lonely eyes and ears to Horse Outside, the expletive-ridden song by Limerick hip-hop comedy outfit Rubberbandits. For those who haven’t come across it yet, it’s a video and tune that has gone viral or “vinyl” as they might say on The Apprentice. I resisted looking it up on YouTube for days, convinced that it couldn’t be as hilarious as every second person I met told me. But it’s true what they say, Horse Outside is hilarious and as distractions go, pretty powerful.

Don’t take my word for it. “Elegant, moving and deeply spiritual. Captures the essence of the Irish soul.” That’s the verdict of one Fintan O’Toole, if you don’t be minding.

There’s a school of thought that says making Horse Outside the Christmas number one in Ireland would go some way to reclaiming the country from the IMF. Downloading it from iTunes and listening to the song will also distract you for whole minutes at a time.

It might also be the best 99 cent you spend this season. Except, of course, if you are lucky enough to run into Desmond and his barrow in the marketplace.

THIS WEEKEND: Róisín will be listening to Christmas FM and/or her Sufjan Stevens Christmas box set. Altogether now “I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day . . .”