In the dead-zone between Christmas and New Year I took a trip to Edinburgh’s Christmas Market, which proved to be both absolutely great and utterly terrible at the same time. I went with my two kids, 5 and 3, and my friend and his two kids, 6 and 4. We’ll call my friend ‘Iain’, mainly because that’s his name. Our kids have names, too. I promise we haven’t just assigned them numbers.

Regular readers will know that my two are called Jack and Christopher. Iain’s kids are called Girl Child and Boy Child.

The train ride into the city was surprisingly stress-free considering that we were two hapless fathers herding four excitable, potentially unruly children into a claustrophobic environment crammed with disapproving strangers for thirty long minutes. For some reason that bit was fine. It was the arriving that reeked of failure, and that was entirely down to the tardiness of our initial departure.

We’d arrived at our home station with mere seconds to spare, so weren’t able to buy tickets prior to boarding. The six of us had had to sprint towards the train like something out of Home Alone, and then dash through the rapidly closing doors like something out of Indiana Jones. There were no ticket collectors/dispensers on-board the train, so we had to queue to buy them at Edinburgh before we could pass through the barriers.

We were slow to realise why everyone else disembarking the train was moving so quickly up the platform – the queue-savvy sons-of-bitches – and so found ourselves at the very back of the ticket-line.

Iain detests the traditional ticketing system. He prefers to deal with automata, which is why he spent the whole duration of our time in the queue frantically trying to buy digital tickets through an app on his phone. He failed. We reached the front before he mastered it. If it had been the Crystal Maze, he would’ve been left behind in the Train Zone as we went on to collect bits of shiny paper in the Crystal Dome.

I don’t know exactly why Iain hates tickets so much. It’s something to do with feeling beholden; of having to bow down for inspection to a haughty stranger. I think he just doesn’t like talking to people, something to which I can definitely relate.

We ascended into Edinburgh proper, fighting our way through a teeming crowd of thousands.

Edinburgh’s Christmas market stretches across two levels of Princess Street Gardens, with a giant, blindingly-bright Big Wheel dominating the event and the city skyline. This year it was crushingly busy and bustling, a clog of people being pushed up, down and along thin arteries flanked by coffee houses, portable pubs and assorted trinket-hawkers. The air – cold and sharp – smelled of irritation and fried onions; alive to boot with the sounds of a thousand ‘excuse me’s’ intermingling with the same six or seven Christmas songs everyone had been listening to on a loop for a solid month already. I haven’t visited the Xmas market since I was about 23, but I don’t ever remember it being this hectic, this brazenly commercialised, this soulless. The kids didn’t give a shit, though. The city was loud and colourful, there were chocolate-covered churros, and there was a mini-rollercoaster. What more could they want?

Iain was overjoyed to learn that we had to pre-purchase a big wad of tickets before the kids could go on any of the fairground rides. He again tried to enlist me in his one-man war against ticket inspections, but I just couldn’t share his anger. Normally I’m something of an anger connoisseur. I get angry over a great many inconsequential and pointless things, and I felt sad that I couldn’t add this one to the collection.

The big, bespectacled lady at the ticket desk asked Iain if he lived in an EH postcode area (i.e. within Edinburgh or its immediate environs). He said no. Because he doesn’t.

‘That’s a shame,’ she said, ‘You would’ve got a 10 per cent discount if you did.’

Iain didn’t miss a beat. ‘I don’t, but he does,’ he said, pointing a thumb back at me.

This was Iain’s chance to stick it to the man, and he was enlisting my help. His old friend wouldn’t let him down. Whom else could he count on in his hour of need?

‘No I don’t,’ I said.

Iain looked at me with disappoint in his eyes, while the ticket lady, in turn, looked at Iain with disappointment in hers. She looked visibly wounded, like her tenuous grip on hope had been wrested from her hands and cast to the gutter by Iain’s treachery. I just sort of laughed, and unashamedly bought my full-price tickets.

‘What did you do that for?’ asked Iain, unable to conceal how miffed he was. I explained that I had a vision of the future, the immediate future, and it was one in which I looked like a complete twat

The woman’s next question, I explained, undoubtedly would’ve been: ‘Oh, so what’s your post code?’ and I would’ve been forced to stutter out something like, ‘ah, E…H… 1… em, 1… 1…. em, 1?’

And she would’ve said: ‘And what street is that?’

And I would’ve said: ‘Em, I think it’s Street… Avenue?…’

‘Are you sure that’s a real street, sir?’ she would’ve asked.

And I would’ve said: ‘Em…could be Crescent… Place?’

‘Crescent Place? Sounds fake to me, sir.’

‘I LIVE IN A FUCKING BIN, OKAY? BEHIND A TOILET.’

So it’s lucky I avoided that, really.

The kids first went on the mini roller-coaster. I think it always helps when you’re trying to promote an atmosphere of happiness and magic for wide-eyed, excited children to have your fairground rides staffed by dead-eyed teenagers who look like they wouldn’t even blink if the ride suddenly derailed, sending your children catapulting into the night sky at 180mph.

We spent an hour or so at the market, going on some more rides with the kids; treating them to the rickety, rocket-shaped death-trap that was the Helter Skelter; feeding them chocolate; trying to get them to stop running in circles like dogs on a beach. Eventually, time took its toll on their manic dispositions and we realised it was time to head home, via McDonalds, naturally, because we’re bad parents.

We thought about going on the big wheel, but thought better of it when we realised it would cost us about £25 each. That’s a lot of money for the kids to decide they were bored after half a revolution, or for the younger kids to violently shit themselves at 100ft.

We made our way to the McDonalds inside the food court in the busy shopping mall that borders Waverley train station for the last – and the worst – leg of our journey. Horror awaited us. Great streams and chunks of it.

I scouted for a table and chairs in the busy food-court with my two boys and Iain’s Girl Child while he went into McDonalds with his little Boy Child to order the food. We hadn’t been sitting for thirty seconds when little Christopher announced that he needed a pee, elongating the vowels so the word lasted almost as long as an actual peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

What the hell was I going to do? Iain was lost in a crowd of people inside McDonalds. I had a unisex group of kids in my care, only two of them mine, so it wasn’t practical to take all of them to the male toilet with me at once. The clock was ticking: Christopher wasn’t renowned for his ball-control. The wife from a couple sitting at the table next to us with their two kids overheard my dilemma and offered to keep an eye on two of the kids so I could whisk Chrissy off for a pissy. I thanked her, but politely declined. Tick tock. I had to make a snap decision. Off we went. All of us. Not ideal, but necessary.

I led the kids around the lower level of the mall as we hunted for the toilets, keeping them close to me and tight together like a comet’s tail lest they get swallowed up by the throng of people. We eventually found the toilets, but the queue leading up to the turnstiles that you had to pass through before you even got a shot at relieving yourself was about 18 people strong, and I didn’t have that kind of time.

I hurried and herded the kids back to the table, hoping Iain’s journey into the dark heart of McDonalds would be completed. It wasn’t. What was I going to do now? Chris kept shuffling, jiggling and loudly complaining. I spied the main doors that led out of the mall and joined with the stone steps outside. Ah-HA! All being well – if I could find a place out there for a surreptitious piss – I’d be back at the table in less than a minute.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the couple from earlier. ‘Would you be kind enough to watch these two after all?’

‘Stay still, don’t talk, don’t move,’ I said to Jack and Girl Child.

I lifted Christopher up under his arms and rushed him towards the sliding doors like a bomb. Once outside we dashed dead ahead into an alcove where Chris unleashed a long, flowing piss you wouldn’t have credited to a creature of his size; back we dashed and waddled, just in time for a young goth at the table behind us – who’d been sitting with her head on a table receiving worried back rubs from her friends for the past ten minutes – to projectile vomit everywhere. I saw it cascading from her mouth and through her hands like potatoey Vimto, an image that stayed with me for the rest of the day (and haunts me even now). Iain arrived seconds later with our food, and we had to wolf it down with the sharp tang of vomit still lingering in the air.

As we began to eat, Iain’s Girl Child loudly announced that she needed the toilet. Off Iain went, back he came and then, yep, this time Jack needed a poo. Off I went, back I came, and then Iain’s Boy Child had to go. No sooner had they left than Chris announced that he was desperate for yet another peeeeeeeeeee. Why was this happening to me?

Here I had the same dilemma again, and the same split of kids. Emboldened by my earlier success, I bomb-waddled Chris out of the mall’s sliding doors (‘Stay there, kids, and don’t move, okay?’) and back to the same reservoir of piss from before, still wet and plentiful, so he could add more to it. I rushed back, Iain returned and then, guess what?

‘Daddy, I need a pooooooo!’

‘Fuck sake!’ I barked, unable to stop the swear word from leaping out my throat.

Iain grinned. ‘I’ll be honest, the only thing that’s making this more bearable for me is seeing how awful it is for you.’

I laughed. ‘I’m glad to be of service.’

We finally got out of there and boarded our return train, where yet another round of pee-pees sent me up and down the carriage like an angry kangaroo. Iain found this, and my exasperated reactions, a continuing source of amusement. I silently wished for a ticket collector to come along the carriage and re-kindle his rage.

It had been a good day.

…most of it anyway.

But we both agreed that for now, and possibly forever, Christmas could definitely, absolutely, incontrovertibly…

…piss off.