I think I have managed to a fair impersonation over the last 6 months of a grumpy old man who hates everyone and everything that doesn’t fit into his particular world view. As it is Christmas and Jesus time I thought I had better set the record straight and say I am not really like that or at least I hope not. I don’t even dislike Christmas. I have always liked getting presents and quite like giving them. All my memories of Christmas are happy ones, even going to midnight mass with my mum and dad. So yahoo sucks to you lot that think I am just an angry cynic. Christmas cards annoy me because they feel rather compulsory and they fall over every time you draw the curtains – they are also, with very few exceptions very ugly indeed. However we had one this year that I really liked. It was by one of my great nephews and consisted of a stream of coloured lines in a vaguely festive shape – it seemed to have been done with no regard for any of the traditional symbols just an expression of perfunctory joy that summed up the mood perfectly. Other than that delight my nurse vomited during my chemo yesterday which was a festive role reversal and I found this letter (below) from Rowan Williams the ex Archbishop of Canterbury who I admire very much. I found it very touching if factually flawed.
Another annoyance I won’t subscribe to is wishing people a Merry Christmas. So I won’t and don’t. Instead I will wish all my readers love and peace and a life as rich as Jimmy Hendrix only longer and without the drugs. Xx Here’s hoping we are all here next year especially me.
You have a remarkably empathic nurse. Compared with ThE Sun or The Guardian, your grumpiness hardly measures on the grumpscale. And I designed the grumpscale. A certain X you know very well may well be redesigning it on a part-time basis, but when I was a similar age I was at least a full-timer. I would imagine father Christmas, like the Barbie Doll in the out-takes after Toy Story 2, eventually complains about how smiling is so exhausting and assumes a more sustainable medium grump. I seem to know rather more than I shouuld like to admit about grump. I am sure my dear family will confirm it to be merely theoretical. 🙂
@gravityisahat love and peace to you too. Thanks for your email. Be great to meet up in a better year!
Happy non-denominational at-least-we’re-pretty-much-all-off-work day(s)! Chris, your blog has kept me hugely entertained over the last few months, and I’m only sorry I haven’t engaged more (often). Bring on 2015, and further societal corrections. X