You know when life wallops you in the soft parts of your head and turns things upside down leaving little room in your bonce for anything else – and then here comes Thanksgiving and what now?  – it’s Christmas? – and crikey Mikey, I haven’t blogged for a whole spletiving* month?

Well that isn’t at all what happened to me.  What happened was that I ate a dodgy kumquat one day and fell into an hallucogenic stupor where I believed fully – and with some effing dismay – in an elaborate storyline with plot points including, but not limited to: arson, love, hate and winter heating allowance; roof slates, insanity and uneven bites.  Now, on this day of Festivus, I have woken up and realized it was all just a crazy dream.  Whether it happened or not is beside the point – I don’t have to believe in it.  In fact, I don’t. Believe it, I mean.  Instead I believe that:

1. Eating broccoli makes me strong and thoughtful

2. And that love is real.

And that’s it.  The rest I’m not sure about, but that’s OK.
There are questions though, many questions at this time of year.  Come, all ye faithful, I mean really, come on!  And when you’re on, Come off it!  Whether or not you believe in the Christmas story surely you must concede God can’t be wild about how we choose to spend it consuming and consuming and, “oh, go on then” consuming a bit more like demented flocks of reward-points-earning, store-credit-having, remortgage-lamenting, stomach-ulcer-developing, wild-eyed, murderously store-employee-trampling ovines?

Problemchild 1 took the baby Jesus out of his manger the other day and replaced him with a bit of ceramic Nessie who was coming from the East bearing gift vouchers for the new king.  Then she ran around warbling “Nessie in the manger, no crib for a bed…” for about half an hour longer than was strictly funny.  (She gets that from me) But the point was well taken.  We might as well have Nessie be part of the Christmas as much as anything else. Get Scottish tourism in on the cash-deer.  Why the bloody-nosed not? All our traditions are such strange amalgams of customs old and new:  Santa only wears red and white because some adman at Coca Colaearly last century wasn’t so keen on the blue and white;  How the virgin birth of the son of a jealous desert God ever came to be associated with an antlered ungulate from Northern climes with an angry nose infection, is a story more convoluted as the one that links cocoa beans from the tropics, bunnies and eggs with the hammering of a man to a cross far back in sand-swirly time in an rocky, unpromising land that people will fight savagely over for millennia. ….And breathe…

I’m not really that wild about it.  ‘Scuse my dramatic breathiness. I can’t even get worked up about the mass massive stupidity any more. We all know this stuff, we all think it every year and we all keep right on with the silly things we believe, emotional creatures that we are.  So do I. I love Christmas, I buy right into the tree and the lights and the ridiculous paper hats that add a tragicomic aspect to the Christmas Day family bust-up on Eastenders.  And I do think there are millions of deeply good people who embody the Christmas spirit – which is a bloody good idea after all – be nice to your neighbour. Still, it’s all a bit mad.  Why can’t we be gooder all the year long?  It’s hard, isn’t it?  Being good an’ that.

I’ve missed the bloggy life.  If I don’t get around to see y’all in the next few days, please don’t be taking it personal, like.  I visit people only as Lord Time allows, randomly, without rhyme nor a smidge of reason.  Except for fatmammycat and Pat.  They rhyme.

Also, here is a book you might like to buy. It’s called Homepages and I’m in it but you should buy it anyway.

Love to you this Christmas, blogchums; love and pie.

*My pletives aren’t ex; they are very current and uttered full-throatedly in the moment.