I'm going home for Christmas, please don't talk to me if we aren't actually friends - Alexander Brown

Heading home for Christmas has its drawbacks

Ah Christmas, a time where many of us return to the homes of our parents for a few days of rest and regression.

Instead of waking up and checking my emails, I can get out of bed and check the fridge, swapping my irritation with slow contacts for the frustration of there being no more cheese.

I can forget about coffees with MPs, or clearing time in my day to go through documents. The only scheduling I care about is what time Doctor Who is on, and when to leave the room to avoid Love Actually.

Christmas is great, the inane small-talk isn't.

It’s a break from the habits and ticks that consume all of us working in politics, the constant discourse, the endless chase for truth and conflict. Instead of endlessly scrolling with stories in mind, I can simply scroll because it’s an addiction. Finally some peace.

It’s a wonderful few days, albeit slightly embarrassing due to the practicalities of coming from a rural village. In the city, I can cycle everywhere, or there’s trains, buses, taxis and an array of other indicators that you live in the 21st century.

Returning home, buses are like the benefits of trickle down economics, I’m told they exist. but I’ve never seen them. So, a man in his 30s becomes reliant on my parents to ferry me to and fro, negotiating a pick-up time like a newly bald Samson.

This is far from the biggest blight, however, as we all know. The real horror of returning home is seeing the people you sort of forgot, the friends from school you knew, and those you just kind of recognise.

Going for drinks on Christmas Eve, they are time black holes waiting to devour you, dreadful pits filled with meaningless conversation you could fall into at any moment.

Just going to the bathroom? There’s what’s-his-name from school, or was it football? You had nothing in common beyond your age 15 years ago and now that’s gone, but they still want to say hi, how’s it going? What you up to these days? Yeah, being an estate agent is hard, we don’t get enough credit. So where you living now? OK great, so and so is over there, go and have that same conversation with them.

This is the true horror of the festive season, the inane small-talk, the grating ghosts of Christmas past. It’s talking about what you do for a living five times in an hour, and wondering how many times you can avoid eye contact walking past someone.

None of us get anything out of this. If we’d wanted to stay in touch, we would. We may have grown up in a rural area, but there’s internet now, Myspace is sweeping through the country.

Obviously this isn’t everyone, some friends of friends are OK, and it’s a necessary evil when returning home to celebrate with loved ones you rarely see due to geography. But that doesn’t mean I want to talk to them, and it doesn’t make it less irritating.

I love Christmas, I love going home for Christmas, I love seeing friends from home for Christmas. But we’re all adults now, if we don’t really like each other, that’s OK, let’s leave it. We can always catch up in the new year.