looking back for xmas pt1

 

Time, one is wont to note, flies when you’re having fun. Is it nearly a year since last Xmas already? The answer of course is “yes!” Well didn’t that just fly by? The answer of course is “dear God no.”

Actually, the movement of time is a strange thing, time is a vari-speed creature; it seems to crawl with painful slowness through the days and weeks and months but a whole year can evaporate in a flash. Last Xmas does feel like only yesterday, even if April or July or even October appear, in comparison, to be many more light years distant.

All of which is by way of ruminative introduction to this annual round-up and review of the year and its loose ends. At least those that concern me and my small coterie - I say small, but in this weather my coterie is actually quite large and fleece lined and I am very grateful for it!

Of course winter with its short days and long nights encourages melancholy - and the earlier months which one may have greeted with enthusiasm naturally fade into the distance. The road from there to here (or I should say ‘now’) may have been Long and Winding (as the song says) but it has also been bastard bumpy and it is with mixed feelings that one scans back along the highway of life and notes the achievement of making it thus far across such difficult terrain.

In doing so, I must (albeit without enthusiasm) turn to that subject currently gripping the country like a hard frost. I refer of course to the controversy surrounding my very good friend and loyal companion, colleague, entrepreneur, adventurer and all round hamster, St-John. The time has come for me to put down the simple facts of the case but more than that to admit my own responsibility in this embarrassing affair. An affair that has, in my opinion, been given far more coverage than necessary in order to distract the public from other revelatory events of real concern - such as the shocking arrest in the Houses of Parliament of a woman discovered to be spying for FIFA.

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