A Little Christmas Innocence

I was in the process of taking the Christmas tree down on Little Christmas (6 January), packing away all the baubles and ornaments that help make Christmas so 'magic and make believe'. It's the saddest part of every Christmas I think...but my last piece of magic every year is the way the Christmas stuff always seems to fit back perfectly into the two card-board boxes I have stored it in, ever since the girls were little, despite the constant addition of new bits and pieces each year.

My young son had just inadvertently caught me out...he came in from the garden and wondered where the squeaky toy Santa had brought to the dog, might have gotten to. I said, 'You mean the yellow cracker I bought in the pet shop?'...Oh-oh!...silence...then a small little voice said...'You bought that!?'

Realising my mistake I added...'Y'know Santa doesn't really come to dogs, only to kids'...but it was already too late, the cat was out of the bag and half way up the tree. He went back outside playing with the dog and I was left with a miserably shedding tree to consider my faux pas. I was taken aback at how easily I had just surrendered our 19-year subterfuge. The soot on the fire-grate, the half-eaten cake, the empty whiskey tumbler, the bulging stockings on the mantle-piece, all fading to memories now. Loose lips swallows reindeer indeed!

Poor boy. That's a big reality check for him...he's nearly 10, not quite a suspension of total belief just yet, but it's the beginning of the end...and it struck me hard, right in the pit of my stomach, like hitting the brakes on an icy road, sensing the first shimmering slide before the realisation hits you that you are not going to be able to stop, as you luge towards that big slidey bend up ahead.

Soon he will be a young man, no longer interested in helping me set up the train tracks around the tree in the corner...and we won't have any innocent babies to nurture, nor ply with time-worn traditional tales of fantasy and expectancy and the baby Jesus...and Christmas, and the tree with all the shiny ornaments that had survived all of our moves and our constant exposure to commercialism, will have lost some of it's lustre...it's quite sad actually!

But then again...what did I expect, it's January, the roads really are icy. Nothing will ever be as it was again. Bethelhem is burning, the wise men have feet of clay and the whole world is coming to grips with a new reality! It seems we may have all lost a bit of innocence this Christmas.

Recession My Arse

Well here we are, in the depths of a recession, so deep in it in fact, that it's like being in a bungee freefall, without the bungee cord. So entirely fantastic and in-credible is it that it's probable that nobody could have predicted it, not even Nostradamus. Well, nobody, y'know, nobody that is...unless you exclude the new cross between Houdini and PT Barnum, aka, Bertie Aherne..yes, that nice man from the Northside, who comes up smelling of roses no matter what pile of shoite he emerges from...try this for prodnostications and procrastinations... as Juno was wont to say!
'Hey when I grow up, I'm gonna be a politician and take brown bag bribes and then become 'Taoiseach' or Prime Minister of Ireland...and no tribunal will ever convict me'.
'Hey, and if they do question me about the bribe money, I'll just say that I won it on a horse, whose name I disremember, and I was paid out in cash, and no one will raise an eyebrow'.
Hey, I'll leave me house, me car, me bank accounts, me wife and me 2 young girls..and yes, in Ireland, yes holier than thou .mother-effin oireland., I'll take on a very public mistress and bring her places with other lads and their wives and mistresses...and no one will even say boo..'!
'Hey, and when me girls grow up, one of them will marry a millionaire popstar...and Hello Magazine will pay me for their wedding photos, and the other one, me favourite, will become a best selling chic-lit writer, making millions on her drivel'!!!
'Hey, I will run the country in times of unprecedented 'Boom'...(I love that word, usually follows a bang)...and I'll make lots of dosh for me and especially for my buddies, and I'll spend everything the country has made in de decade of decadence, on poor investments and jobs for deboys, and just when they think 'it cannot get any better than this' I'll prove then right and pull out of office, just right before the shoite hits the fan, but only to wild and exuberant praise and applause'.
'Hey, when I do retire, em' I mean resign, I will hand over the running of the country to an otherwise smart and nice guy, a suckling pillock from down de country, who will completely fall flat on his face, before he even gets off the starting blocks, poor bollix'!
Oh, and my last prediction;
'Hey, when I'm done with all of that, and having done the country some service, I believe I am going to be appointed President of Ireland, hmm, maybe in 3 years time. Arais ins an Aras, Aris!
Any Bets?
Watch this space!
Recession...what recession...a tour company just went bust in Dublin today...with 1200 paid bookings for people (with way too much money obviously, duh), to visit Santa...in ..wait for it...the North Pole, in Lapland @ €1,000+ per person...!
And tell me...ye well educated jung people of Ireland, since when did the feckin' North Pole sink south to shanggin' Lapland. Gimme a break!
Aah, I suppose if you swallowed the Bertie Fairy tale, you are entitled to still believe in Santa!
Recession my arse!