Chr*stmas has been a huge success. If this is what I can do with Chr*stmas, then I love it.

Friday was very quiet at work so I took an extended morning break to go and buy the weekend's food. I'd not been looking forward to having to go to Oxford Street, I could have avoided it completely but I was set on getting my delectables from Selfridges. Whenever I have to visit Oxford Street I miss my combine harvester. Chr*stmas time would be especially rewarding, I could start at Marble Arch and work my way towards Tottenham Court Road, sucking up Euros, Orientals, everyone. Feeding them into the front and having them splatter out of the back. Euro soup, or better an eclectic mix of Euro-Oriental red miso with chunky bits on a bed of shredded GAP and dusted with John Lewis fibres.

'This time of the year makes me sick to my guts, all this good cheer is a pain in the nuts'

Oxford Street was not that bad. Selfridges was hell. I had never been to Selfridges before, in ten years I've not set foot inside the shrine to consumer obedience. Not knowing what was inside was far more satisfying than knowing. I preferred to bestow upon it an aura of mystesism and lure, I could play a game of temptation and always win. This year however I knew where I could find the delicious things I wanted to be trapped in a flat with over a totally unnecessary and incomprehensible time of the year.

I paused in front of the building, listening to the noises of Oxford Street. All the calls of year-end clearances, claims of service after sales, perfumes, furniture, it cleans, it cooks, it does everything you want it to do. I contemplated the inevitable encounter and confirmed to myself that I'd always had a sadistic streak. I stepped into the rotating pod, encapsulated, incorporated into the production line, set in motion, looking through the glass, into the glazed-over appearance of the person being ejected. I was sucked in and spat out into a hot gust of air that rammed down the back of my neck. The rotating doors had started me on my mission and all I needed to complete the task was night vision, a gasmask, several cannisters of teargas, smoke granades, handgranades and an Uzi. Point of no return.

Flustered, I tried to integrate myself into the new environment. Assimilate the competition, annihilate them and make off with the loot. Salmons, smoked and cured, Foies Gras, chestnuts and a goose in my bag. I could do this. I was not even half a minute into the panic when I realised that nothing was signposted. How was I to know where to go and I'd not taken the scale of the place into consideration. Shopping drones streamed by me, not registering my presence, a stampede of frenzied little christmas robots and a 20 man strong chorus of poofs and a paino hammering out yuletide renditions of songs that should be banned startled me.

I was sweating and the typical human reaction was to find someone who worked there. Someone in uniform, someone I could find comfort in. I made my way to the escalators, my hypnotic state must have led me to believe that they could take me to a higher, calmer level but these levels of Selfridges are like the levels of hell, there is no calmer. I stepped onto the moving metal, the teeth on the edge of the stairs, the hard, sharp and menacing corners of the stairs induced an ancient fear of falling, smashing into them with my teeth. I step off at the top, nice and smooth but I'm blinded by the light. I walked to my left and slipped straight on to the row of teeth going back down. I stepped off and confronted a security guard dressed much like Poncharello from "CHiPs". I ask him for a floor plan but he tells me where the info desk is, he's going to be hard to crack but I persist and manage to extract information on where the food halls are.

Food halls in Selfridges at Chr*stmas time turn people into animals.

I found the source. Just like Poncharello said, 'past Godiva chocolates, on the left'. It was frantic and I quickly took my place in the queue at the fish counter. It took half an hour to get served, but I was not leaving without my festive gob clobber. Smoked was the flavor of the day and I ordered eel, salmon, cod roe, mackerel and marlin. None of this turkey bullshit. We eat turkey now because America had a surplus of cranberries so it was decided to market the wood chip flavored bird and send with it all the trimmings like cranberry jelly. Chicken tastes better. A plathora of smoked fish and roe, tubs of vacherin melting and smelly require no preparation or clean up. Even better.

I left the food hall with my fish and smelly cheese. The wine and beer sucked me in and I did a pretty good job of decimating their pittiful selection of belgian beers. Although there were exotic Abbey ales, chocolate flavored, wheat beers, doubles and tripples like my old friend Grimbergen, there were not enough.

The revolving glass doors ejected me, through the pod I saw the calm in the eyes of the fool being sucked in. The calm before the storm, the innocence before the horror. I want to see the horror in their eyes but I've got my bags, my food and drink, my comfort and Oxford Street seems safer anyway.

Not once did I have to utter the meaningless words Merry Chr*stmas. It has taken a few years of being a grumpy young man but I feel I have made progress. I am beyond Chr*stmas, I am unaffected, unafflicted. I can see. The ripples of my acrid and scathing cynicism have reached their shores.

I spent the dreaded day with my mother and sister on Primrose hill. The long walk there, the crisp air and the spectacular vista of London made us all laugh, laughing about the past and stories that we remembered. We had lunch at mine and watched Curb your enthusiasm till late into the evening, drinking and laughing.