Snowballs

Christmas minus three days and my mind turns to the practicalities like booze and wrapping paper. I'm usually much more organised than this but this Christmas in July tradition is still confusing me, even if the weather says it's midwinter.

Anyway, tonight I came out of the gym, you know, wet hair, beetroot cheeks and went into the Liquorland bottle shop in the mall to buy some snowball or some advocaat, because there's a rule somewhere that it's not Christmas without snowballs, isn't there?

I searched the shelves but couldn't find it so approached the desk.

"Have you got any advocaat?"

"What?"

"Have you got any advocaat?"

"No, I mean, what's that?". The cashier was about fifteen and I could see what a tragic figure I cut with my wet hair dragged back into a bobble and my rainproof coat. Didn't her granny teach her anything?

"You know, you make it into a snowball drink"

"I've never heard of it"

"Okay, well the Americans call it egg-nog so perhaps I'm speaking your language now"

"Oh egg-nog, yes, it's yellow isn't it? No, we don't stock it and if I'm honest you won't be able to buy it unless you do a search on Google and see whether there's a shop downtown stocking specialist stuff. Sorry"

Specialist stuff? What sort of place is this that they don't drink snowball at Christmas? What sort of Yulefest is this going to be?

Bugger.