Yeti

I watch a clockwork ensemble gradually tick over, smiling Hanuman sets fire to a city made of ivory, fireworks pop and smoke in a three dimensional air matrix overhead. It is the winter fete and crowds have gathered around a wide selection of entertainment at Spinningfields Winter Experience. The ice rink is made of real ice. If you bite off the backs of slugs you can see their organs. There is a strong man competition. Gerrard Jones, 35, is one of the contenders and having come all the way from his home town of Earby, he's pretty eager to win. I ask him about his training.
“My method is hard soft.” he says.
“Which one?” I say.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“Is it hard or soft?”
“It's both.”
“Isn't hard and soft together just...normal?” I say.
“It goes hard, then soft. Hard soft.” he says. I thank him with a little bow. We both bow towards the stage then at each other, banging our foreheads. He clutches at his and howls.
“Don't bow at the same time. After one other.” he says. I bow towards him and when I lift my head manage to catch him on the chin. An official runs up to us.
“Are you boys ready for the weight lifting?” he says.
“Yes we are.” says Gerrard. I follow the twenty stone man to the back of the stage.

As Gerrard gets ready I peek through the curtain at the current champion getting ready to lift a block of ice.
“He must be cold.”
“Nevermind that, help me into this thing.” he says, gesturing toward a reindeer costume. He puts on the bottom half first, I help him put the giant cartoon reindeer head on.
“What about the top?” he says. I fetch the top part of the costume and try to pull it over the fake head.
“No, I need to take the head off first.” he says. I ignore him, climb onto a chair and begin to yank at the top of the costume. The chair slips from under me and I am left grabbing onto Gerrard, we stumble backwards and forwards, knocking over a table filled with sports drinks and then fall over.
“You idiot!” he says, voice muffled inside a fake reindeer head inside a fake reindeer torso.
“I'm sorry, I thought it went over your head.” I say. He begins to pull at it.
“It's stuck...help me get it off.” he says. I put a foot on each of his shoulders and begin to pull.
“Stop it...you're...hurting my neck.” he says. I shake my head and look around the backstage. There's a jar of vaseline. I begin to smear it onto the brown fur and around his neck, pushing big clumps of the yellow substance into him. I try again and this time it comes away easily, making me stumble backwards into the official. I wipe my hands on his jacket.
“Gerrard Jones?” he says at the body builder.
“Yes.” he says, face and hair smeared in vaseline. He goes out onto the stage, waves at the crowd then picks up the block of ice. Almost immediately it slips out of his grip and lands on his toe. He howls again, grabs at his toe and begins to start hopping around the stage until falling backwards through a curtain, managing to fall headfirst into the lubricated reindeer torso he had just escaped from. When he gets up he takes a few blind steps forward before stepping on a bottle of lucozade, making him slip out through the backstage and onto the ice rink. He begins to shout and howl as he slides across the rink, trying to pull the reindeer costume off his head. He finally manages to, then screams as he sees the wall ahead of him in which he bangs into at quite a pace. I run after him with some paper towels.
“Did you see that?” I say.
“I saw enough of it. Pass me a towel.” he says.
"I think you lost." I say, patting him on the back.

Christmas Cuckoo Land

The Manchester Christmas markets are nestled in St. Ann's square, just by the newly refurbished town hall and Manchester's only public toilet. At this market extravaganza one can sample the tastes of a Christmas that never was at faux-cabin retail stations that labyrinthiate the markets, selling goods such as vintage clothing, e-cigs, pork and ornaments to thousands of pedestrians moving along at a speed more akin to the dynamics of liquid rather than humanoid locomotion. There is a rustic bar which sells the finest arrangement of booze seen in the run-up to Christmas; mulled wine, German beer and American ale all can be bought at great cost whilst one relaxes against a post, admiring the other drinkers cluttering up the place. Enjoy the sound of children running around combined with the aroma of boiling wine. Sample at the arrangement of Mediterranean food for sale, treasuring the stone fruits as you peruse your recent purchases. Perhaps a hand-knitted mug warmer is resting in the paper bag, peeking from behind the corner of a block of smoked cheese made by Kurdish goat farmers on the slopes of Mount Strandzha. Maybe a piece of upcycled boat jewellery made of finest steel awaits a loved one, maybe even a chain-link owl to hang above your bathroom door. It is a truly magical place in which communities come together to enjoy Christmas, not to mention bringing in a decent revenue to local businesses and independent creatives. All of this is watched over by a fifty foot Father Christmas sat on top of the town hall like a psychedelic gargoyle, it's festiveness overpowering.

After arriving in the early hours of the morning and having to wait outside I took stock of winter in the city. In the history of painting there were many landscapes about the Earth being closer to the sun, yet there weren't many Classical paintings of cities beneath the frost. How did Manchester look five hundred years ago on the site of the Christmas markets? The Britons, Angles and Danes perhaps met on this very spot and traded goods under the midwinter sun, preparing for Pagan and Christian feasts. A ram would have been killed in the fog, it's freshly skinned head emerging from a hessian sack as a sacrifice to the Gods of Yule. Meanwhile the Britons would celebrate Saturnalia by doing the opposite of what was normal. War hardened soldiers would wear women's clothes and dogs would act like pigs, each gave presents and passed the berries of mistletoe by kissing one another. Bonfires would be lit and epic poems would be told of Norse ghosts made of mud and of the giants D'Frigga and Yol-M'nnstatr sleeping in the earth. Nowadays the city slowly begins to wake with the smell of Greggs and bus exhausts, commuters beginning to flow in from primate nests and jauntily begin to jog up and down the pavement jostling for a free copy of the Metro or a cup of hot java. The workers of the Christmas market begin to arrive wearing bubble vests and bobble hats, faces pinched red from the cold and stained with iron oxide. I walk across the cobbles like some kind of prehistoric bird, head swivelling from side to side as I admire the warez being offered.

The hours pass by with ease as I make my circuit, snorting down hotdogs and talking to the city folk about whether or not it was about to snow, mind frantic at the Christmas shopping opportunities around me. 8.3% of your life haunted by a festive holiday. 8.3% of the twentieth century, of television, of conversation. I begin to climb the walls of the town hall, shouting at the people below.
“Cease sublimation!” I cry, heaving my entire body up using my fingertips, carefully picking my way up the brickwork. Eventually I reach the enormous Father Christmas and look down at the shoppers below. Some are jeering, others call for me to get away from Father Christmas. I take the fictional man in my hands and begin to shake and pull at it, trying to dislodge it.
“Is Father Christmas just an elf?!” I bellow, managing to tear the festive sculpture free from the steel supports. With the groaning of metal it begins to tip down towards the crowd. There is an enormous crash as the Santa lands on top of the market. I look down, suddenly aware of what I had done.
“No...no!” I say. But it appears as if a Christmas miracle has happened! Father Christmas has been impaled through the head with a gigantic crucifix brought in by religious extremists. Everybody is saved! I jump for joy.
“Looks like the son of God didn't die in vain after all.” I say, unzipping my jacket. I am wearing a Big Face t-shirt with Nelson Mandela on it.
“Silent night, holy night,
Son of God
Watched at night.
Crowning angels are silent at bed.
Holy Mary, mother of grace.
Rest in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.” I sing beautifully.

Mamucium

Rainy Manchester. Rainy, god forsaken Manchester, with its glass towers and multiple football teams. With it's musical history that it clings onto like someone who used to be cool. With mile after mile of terrace and suburb surrounding a concrete nucleus in which nothing gets done. With its university fostering some of the most influential minds in recent history whilst also harboring a significant portion of average minds. Manchester sits snug in the borough of Greater Manchester, an egg inside an egg. Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Tameside, Stockport, Trafford and Salford all circle the city like the moons of Jupiter, yet with less fantastical names. It has its own airport, street lights, public transport system and a rich sense of community through advertising. It is Manchester in which I first cut my teeth as a rookie reporter, writing up stories on traffic disasters and unnecessary surgeries, reviewing bands in dingy basements who didn't even know I was there. And like many others I had returned to the north of England, head empty and spine perforated. This was England post-recession, post 9-11, post-Diana, post-Thatcher, post-Industry. It was time to scry the zeitgeist from wi-fi hotspots, Bitstrips, competitive cooking shows and so on. Manchester was as good a place as any. London was expensive, Liverpool was cold, there never seemed to be enough light in Bristol, Birmingham was stuck in a perpetual state of 1979 due to factors known only to myself, Newcastle had poor drainage, I had been banned from Chelmsford, Durham and Sunderland, Bradford had disagreeable architecture, Belfast had it's own thing going on, and I couldn't seem to find a decent curry anywhere else save for Glasgow, but why would a high-tech media sociopathologist running a brain limb across the meme sphere want to move to Glasgow? So Manchester it was. Acid rain on an acid house.

And so I stride along the streets, twisting my neck to and fro, rummaging in bins for clues. A wizard, a psycho-geographer, a bum. I am none of these things. I am a metanoid thirsty for information, mouth glued to a hose connected to a car with a bomb in it. The year 2014 is nearly here, isn't it. The year in which the Queen dies. The year in which the internet is turned off in what is known as Intergate. The year in which China begins to populate the moon with annoying robots. Yet before all that must come January the first, New Years Day, a champagne and mephedrone binge. Probably. If not, why not? And why wait? This is winter and it is hot.