As I meandered throught an empty Glasgow street I noticed the loneliness that Christmas brings. The Oxfam shop, trying it's best to make the window display as festive as possible, a Silent Night LP sat at a jaunty angle, next to a Phil Collins record. I peer in the window and notice the revolving book case filled with dog-eared Mills & Boon novels. I walk on. I think about how a shop like that survives throughout Christmas. When everyone else is busy buying VCR's and clothes and turkeys and trimmings, that little shop struggles to survive, hoping that the regular target audience will remember to grace it's doortstep and not leave it out at Christmas. It's the same with garden shops. You'll be hard pushed to find a busy one at this time of year. Who'll be buying plants for this weather? While other shops are looking for Christmas staff, those shops will be having to lay people off, cause it's getting a bit quiet. As I walked on down the street, I just thought all these depressing thoughts about homeless people and how they're going to hate Christmas. People are always so much more crueller and uncaring for the homeless at Christmas. People are too busy to care about other peoples feelings. It's not right. I really don't want to go into all the horrible thoughts I have about lonely people at Christmas. Suicide rates go up, no one bats an eyelid. Think of children who are beaten, abused and maltreated. Do you think Christmas is going to be any different. If anything, it'll emphasise the divide between themselves and kids who are lucky ewnought to have a stable homelife. Anyway, if you can be happy, please do so. But just think about others, eh? Thanks.... Pamela xxx ...................................................... I AM OBSESSED WITH BOTTLE GREEN MINI COOPERS. FEAR ME.. _______________________________________________________ Tired of slow Internet? Get @Home Broadband Internet http://www.home.com/xinbox/signup.html +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+