Willy Trolove: Not much goodwill to spare in this place of purgatory

COMMENT

No matter how many winters you spend in London, it never seems like Christmas.

There is no fake snow sprayed on the window of your local dairy. It isn't even called a dairy. It's a newsagent, and the newsagent doesn't know it's Christmas.

Down by the tube station there are four newsagents. These are run by families from Turkish Kurdistan, Kurdish Turkistan, the bit of Kashmir claimed by India but occupied by Pakistan, and the bit of Pakistan claimed by Kashmir but occupied by India. Not surprisingly, they don't sell much in the way of Christmas ham or peace and goodwill to all humankind.

The radio only plays funk or hip-hop. The Allied Command doesn't get a mention. You never learn who it has called on to do it again.

You can't go Christmas shopping in your T-shirt and your jandals without losing limbs to frostbite. If you do go shopping, you have to set some time aside.

It goes a bit like this.

You put on two coats, some gloves, a scarf and a hat. You take them off because you need to go to the loo. You put them on again and walk out the door and down 35 steps. Then you return for your umbrella. You don't need a gym membership. Every day you get a few hours of cardiovascular exercise just leaving the house.

Walking to the tube brings on a sweat. The tube is hotter than the Devil's breath and packed with children fed on food colouring, pre-adolescent teens wearing tops that say 'Porn Star' and 'U Want It? Come and Get It", shoppers reading celebrity magazines full of photos of celebrities suing celebrity magazines for taking photos of them, and tramps coughing up lungs.

To avoid drowning in your own perspiration, you take off all your layers. When you get to your stop, you put them on again.

Outside the station, it is raining. You curse the world because in the process of taking off and putting on all your layers, you left your umbrella on the tube. It is now halfway to Brixton.

You don't know where to go shopping, so you go to Oxford St, which is slightly more crowded than the Serengeti during the wildebeest migration.

You fight your way through the stampede of pedestrians. Each one is 1.5m wide with no manoeuvrability, rugged up against the cold, and with arms stuck out at right angles. Dangling off them are absurdly sized bags with gibberish markings: GAP, Marks & Spencer, fcuk, Jigsaw.

You turn into Selfridges.

There may be violence in the Sunni triangle, but it is nothing compared to Christmas shopping in Selfridges.

On all five floors the battle rages. Shoppers fight to get to tills. Credit cards fly like knives. Helpless old ladies get shoved aside by Londoners who may as well be saying, "I live only to spend".

Never have you seen such carnage, such naked aggression, such cold, hard, calculating consumption. Somewhere upstairs, bent over a feeble light in a dusty office, the ghost of old Mr Selfridge rubs his hands in glee.

After half an hour of elbowing your way through shoppers but not getting any closer to the merchandise, you give up.

It would be nice to send someone that £35 designer toast-rack or that £99 golf-ball massager, but the postage home would be a killer. Besides, the Royal Mail will probably go on strike again and the Christmas presents won't arrive until the third Wednesday in Lent.

So you throw your scarf ends around your neck and pad out on to the bitter street. It is only 4pm but already the night has come.

You think of home and smile. No smiles greet yours. No eyes twinkle with delight.

Christmas in London is purgatory, and the shoppers wear the same 1500m stare that you see on a commuter train.

A tramp sits in an alcove holding a bit of damp cardboard that reads "Hungry. Need money for Food". You stop, nip into a shop and buy a sandwich.

You try to give it to the tramp. He looks at you as if you are an idiot.

"Don't want this crap," he says. "Give me some bleedin' money."

You sigh and walk on, wondering why you are here.

Then you see them, the Christmas lights of London, bright pearls in the shape of snowflakes and Christmas trees, strung out across Oxford St and stretching far off into the night like a procession of delicate stars.

You stop to take them in. The cold air turns your breath to fairy dust.

And you decide, munching on the sandwich, that you won't send any Christmas presents this year. You will write a letter home instead.

And this is what you write.