Merry Christmas!

A Merry Christmas To All My Reader

and whatever the New Year may bring  l'très saint Hollande et tous les politiciens preserve you from the terrors of the Gloooobal Warning!

Hyperbole 'more dangerous than fat birds' claims Chief Sanity Officer

"The Four Horsemen and the Fat Bird of the Apocalypse are a piffling threat when hyperbole will kill nearly everybody in Britain by next Wednesday," claimed Britain's Chief Sanity Officer today, or is expected to claim if he can be arsed now that the Press Release has gone out and earned the required airtime on the Today Programme.

"The real threat to the ship of state comes from the tophamper of timeservers and passengers making wildly overstated claims to display their Importance and advertise their Damehoods, creating life-threatening torrents of futile turbulence among the stupid and politicians."

In other news:  "We're dangerous too, just you wait," claims Chief Fat Blokes Officer.

She's a Peach

Eight peach stones from the late Pliocene, two-and-a-half million years old, have been
found in Kunming. The previous oldest definitely old definitely peaches go back only eight thousand years.

Good excuse, that, to post some slightly dated Anthropocene totty:

Gift Suggestion

Some kind fellow sent me this Botanical Ginvent Calendar which on inspection proved to hold 24 miniatures of gin spiked with various different herbs ("erbs" as the pretentious like to say), spices or fruits: caraway seed; orange peel; rosemary; orris root and the like.

I speedily tried the first 5 to catch up (as it is now the 5th) and I must say the other 19 hit the spot as well, leaving me feeling like an old-fashioned Chymist's Shoppe in a floaty sort of way. Then back to a good belt or few at the Famous Grouse to kill off the pharmaceutical miasma before it overwhelmed me.

It struck me that my three crates of 9 litres Famous each is around 24 with a bit left over for deceleration minus the ones I've emptied and the 5 I had better hurry up with. You could put, say, a different-coloured pair of socks on each bottle and end up with a fine Advent and Christmas Present idea combined.

I don't think I have that many socks immediately to hand. I find I am wearing one which is a start but I can't see the other one and I don't know where any more are. "Look in the airing cupboard" my old Mother used to say but I don't have an airing cupboard so that advice is no longer pertinent, however well-intentioned.