A CHILD IS BORN

THE MIRACLE OF THE MYSTERY OF CHRISTMAS never ends. Around two thousand years ago there was the greatest miracle in the annals of Judaeo-Christian faith when Mary, albeit a virgin, was pronounced pregnant with baby Jesus. The scriptures do not give us a great deal of information about how this pregnancy was taken by friends of the family, as, after all, in the year dot in the Middle East adultery was an offence punishable by stoning. As indeed it is today.

YET TO SHOW HOW PROGRESS has been achieved over the two millennia since we welcomed the Christ child into our midst, we now have the miracle of popular comedian Elton John and his Canadian wife David Furnish becoming parents of a child born, no less, on Christmas Day itself. Once again there is not a great deal of news about what the locals are thinking in the John’s home state of Georgia, USA, but I imagine a bit of a desire for stoning those engaging in untoward sexual behaviour in the good ‘ole deep south Bible Belt is in the air.

THUS ONE IMAGINES THAT young Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John, will be kept in the closet for some time after he comes out of his swaddling gold and silver lamé clothes. The magazine US Weekly does not report on how the mother is doing, but the father, “overwhelmed with happiness and joy at this very special moment” says that it was David who convinced him into becoming a father. We share in their joy and in this new sign of liberalism and freedom and the miraculous in the modern age.

HO, HO, HO!

NOW THAT MOST OF THE FAT, SPOTTY HARRIDANS who were the driving force behind the political correctness movement of the late seventies and early eighties have become thin, spotty grandmothers, it is once again perfectly safe to state that I am dreaming of a white Christmas without running the risk of being clapped in irons for being a racist.

YET, EVEN SO, ONE STILL HAS TO BE CAREFUL in what one states at this time of the year. We have the unfortunate case of the gentleman dressed as Father Christmas (or I suppose it should be Santa Claus) outside Macy’s department store in New York City, in America, who was arrested when he uttered the expression “Ho, ho, ho!” and a passing lady took offence. In court she alleged he said the words with “rather too much relish” as he looked at her, “ringing his little bell”. As I was not present, I am unable to pass comment, but I do concede that there is a temptation involved in the miserable profession of standing in the biting cold dressed in a smelly outfit and watching upper class tottie trot into the perfume department in their gladrags.

HOWEVER, I WAS NOT DREAMING of quite so much white as to have my flight to London and then on to Manchester cancelled by British Airways, forcing me to mix with the so-called “working” classes and come by train to the stinking hell-hole that is called the Algarve and take an EasyJet flight directly to Liverpool. We shall see how this all functions in the fullness of time. In the meantime things seem to be all systems go. But it is, in fact, “mean” time. The Algarve is bad enough as it is; sitting almost on my own for three hours in the ghostly silent golf-themed Portakabin they call an airport is depressing beyond belief.

EARLIER THIS YEAR I WAS “VOLCANOED” twice, and on one occasion had to put up with the horrors, for an Englishman, of having to travel through France; this year I am at least once putting up with the nightmare, for a gentleman, of coming to the Algarve. I on occasion wonder why I put up with these tribulations, but at the end of the journey I am also quickly reminded why.

TIDINGS OF COMFORT AND JOY

“FORTIFIED IN THEIR FRONT PARLOURS,” wrote Geoffrey Hill, the most important living English poet, “at Yuletide men are the more murderous. Drunk, they defy battle-axes.” Hill was writing this in the Mercian Hymns, his famous collective “prose poem” which combines some elements of the history of England with his own personal life. One day he will be seen as the most intelligent and interesting English language poet of the last couple of centuries; for the moment I am content to tell a wider world his poetic view of getting “bladdered” at Christmas in Britain.

WHILST AGREEING WHOLEHEARTEDLY WITH HILL as to the murderous aspect of getting out of one’s skin at Yuletide, I would like to add that it is also the time when men, rather than being merry and thus courageous, become more suicidal than at any time of the year except in Nordic countries, when suicide can be happily practised at any time of the year under the supervision of the government, or in Switzerland, where suicide is becoming a verb; as in, “Hello. I’ve come to this clinic to suicide my mother, who is very ill.”

BESIDES GOOD OLD FASHIONED SUICIDE, there is also a dramatic increase in domestic violence. Women, according to many campaigning websites and agencies, are five times more likely to take a beating from their husbands during the twelve days of Christmas than at any other time. Over fifty percent of women who become battered wives suffer their first beating at this time, and most of them will, in the spirit of the season, forgive their husbands, boyfriends or “civil partners” after the latter have promised resolutions for the New Year.

HOPELESS RESOLUTIONS, IT SEEMS, as January is by far the record month for divorce applications in the United Kingdom. All of this suggests the extreme dangers of a society putting about the ideals of goodwill, solidarity, kindness, comfort, joy and peace to all men while cutting jobs, reducing benefits and increasing prices and taxes; anyone who is not exactly experiencing comfort and/or joy will either get wrecked on cheap booze from the local three-for-two supermarket, hang themselves/put their heads in the oven where the turkey ought to be, or become criminally violent. Or all three, although naturally not in this order.

MOST LIKELY NONE OF THESE THINGS will befall me. At the moment I am in Portugal again, in my mountain retreat, where I have come to distribute small but significant gifts to some of the villagers and to fraternize with the local political leaders. And then on again, despite the frightening news of a shutting down of airports, home to England, where what awaits me is the picture above. Christmas greetings to everyone!

SOME CAME RUNNING

MUCH CHATTER THIS WEEK HAS REVOLVED AROUND the prankish behaviour of some students who came to London on Tuesday to protest about a measly increase in the “fees” they pay to their universities for putting up with their ignorance and attempting to teach them. The government had little choice over this matter: universities have been whingeing and whining about being penniless for years, and one of the methods of answering this is to allow them to increase the money they receive from miscreants. This is obviously better than making all of us pay.

YET MANY PEOPLE WONDER WHY universities need money at all. The scandal, for the general public, is the salaries academics receive for working one or two days a week for between sixteen to twenty weeks a year. What the common man does not understand, of course, is that when we are not teaching, we are hard at work thinking, sometimes even when we are asleep. Thus the number of working hours is far in excess of those punched on the clock. (One may wonder, however, what some of us are thinking about.)

OUR STUDENTS WERE SOMEWHAT EXUBERANT this time, and it appears that some of them managed to give the peelers the slip and go on a jaunt about London, spraying shop windows with foul language, frightening Christmas shoppers and, most alarmingly, attacking the vehicle carrying Prince Charles and Camilla Duchess of Cornwall. It is reported that there were cries of “Off with their heads!”, and, indeed, Charles III will have to be on his best behaviour if he does not wish to go the way of his namesakes when he becomes monarch.

ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE: questions are being asked of Home Secretary Theresa May on all of the Sunday political talk shows as to whether Camilla was “poked with a stick” on Tuesday. I suppose the only person who knows whether she was poked, besides Camilla herself, is Prince Charles.

WEEWILLYWONKALEAKS

I AM NOT PERSONALLY PARTICULARLY ENAMOURED of the glum Australian whistleblower Julian Paul Assange, and, frankly, neither are you. One of the reasons for this is that I feel such a childish idiot when using the slightly smutty name of his website organisation. However, it is impossible to ignore the enormous benefits to the wider world of his journalistic activity. Since 2006 he has quite rightly been the recipient of fame, notoriety and the occasional international award for his brave stance unmasking illegal killings in Kenya, illegal nuclear waste dumping in Africa, the ludicrous scam known as the Church of Scientology (Misellus Fantasiatomcruisensis to give it its medical name), international bank robberies (by international banks) and misuse of power by the Western Alliance government in two wars and in its dealing with the prisoners thereof.

TO SUGGEST HE HAS AN AGENDA against the United States in particular would thus be paranoia; to suggest that anyone can rape a Swedish woman in her house in her own bed, at three in the morning, after having had sex with her once “just after midnight”, and while she was asleep, seems, at least on a cursory reading, far-fetched, although I would plump for the term “impossible” if I were forced into coming up with an adjective.

I HAVE NO WISH TO INDULGE in national stereotypes, so I will resist the temptation to here cite one of the many “What happened when the Australian man met the Swedish girl?” jokes, which usually end with the punch line of the girl saying things like “I do now, you smooth-talking bastard” or “nine is my lucky number”, jokes which are as unfunny as they are insulting to Swedish women everywhere, but I can think of at least five reasons why this woman’s allegation smells fishy.

A FIDDLE WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY INSIDE AN ENIGMA

NOT SINCE WINSTON CHURCHILL’S original quotation has there been so much chattering hatred and distrust about what really goes on inside the collective mind game we in the West call Russia. We were perfectly happy during the Cold War, when we understood the rules of the game, and remained so for a few years after the Glasnost and Perestroika experiences slowly led to Russia being coaxed into returning to what it used to be – a hidebound, poverty-stricken hell-hole full of peasants, drunks, a very small liberal aristocracy and a tiny (i.e. one person) ruling class. Through all this we still kept and put up with Red Square’s dealings.

NOW, HOWEVER, WE SEE THAT “RAS” PUTIN and his henchmen “oiligarchy” millionaires who own football in Russia are even more devious than anything seen until now. In buying the 2018 World Cup, in the process taking it away from its rightful home forever, we have been left miffed. “What can they be up to now?” senior politicians ask themselves. But in merely being confused, there is a risk that our leaders may miss the real danger: an alliance between Russian money and corruption with FIFA’s money and corruption will result in the most dangerous superpower the world has ever seen. Our politicians must get real as soon as possible, withdraw from Afghanistan and send our boys to Switzerland to occupy the FIFA offices.