Ben Machell on Christmas excess and super grans

Between now and the end of the month I will eat at least seven Christmas dinners. I know. I’m as shocked and mildly disgusted as you are. The problem with the festive season, when you’re a sensationally greedy man, is that there’s so much food on offer that nobody’s really keeping track of how much you’ve eaten. But then one day in a morbid fit of self-awareness you decide to crunch the numbers and the results are chilling. Seven? Christmas dinners? How? Where? And, more importantly… why?

Well, the first four will be the ones laid on by my work canteen next week: all the trimmings plus mince pie consumed over consecutive lunchtimes, on my own, in total silence. By the third or fourth return visit every rational part of me is saying, ‘Look, Ben, listen: you don’t have to eat yet another roast turkey lunch simply because it’s there.’ But then another, deeper, altogether more primal part of me will whisper… ‘Yes… yes you do. Eat it. It’s a tradition. And the way you keep traditions alive is by doing them. Day after day. On your own.’ So I do.

Then, having hit my stride, we arrive at Christmas day with my in-laws. My fifth Christmas dinner but my first in the company of other people, which means I have to remember to do things like talk and occasionally make eye contact during the intake process. The final two sittings take us up to Yorkshire, where I will have a Christmas dinner with my mother, followed by a Christmas dinner with my dad and gran. Many people with divorced parents find this to be a difficult time of year. But then, I just really like roast potatoes, so I guess you take the rough with the smooth. So there you go. Seven. With some discipline

I could get it down to three. With even more discipline, I could probably hit double figures.

Speaking of my gran, I spent the night at hers with my four-year-old son recently. It was surreal, like an out-of-body flashback, watching him do all the things I used to do with her three decades ago: the pink blancmange, the bath and talcum powder on the bum, the pints of Ovaltine, the labyrinth of bed sheets and electric blankets cranked up to eleven, the (shockingly racist) Rupert Bear stories. We both fell asleep tucked-up alongside each other. It was great. Grans are the best. Mine is, anyway.