I write with a gut full of turkey and plum duff (actually I made that up for the sake of traditionalists, we had a delicious fruit salad and meringues, hand crafted this merry morn by Mrs T), with a tremendous sense of excitement and anticipation of a coming year that will herald a new dawn. The cheese-eating surrender monkeys have graciously re-opened the Channel after a pointless forty eight hours of point-making, Britain and the EU have finally concluded an eleventh hour trade deal, Covid is reeling under the combined assault of vaccines various (well it will be soon), the shortest day is behind us and Christmas Day has been a proper cold, clear and sunny one, perfect for walking canines and teenagers across the wide open spaces of Salisbury Plain. Only another visit from the Almighty’s son would enliven an already heady day.
To further add to the sense of untold happiness, we’ve just spent time on the phone to York-based family and a lovely What’s App video conference with sister and cousins near Vancouver. The wonders of modern science. When I was a lad I recall we had to book a Christmas transatlantic call weeks in advance and then there was no guarantee of a usable connection. How the world has shrunk. I have a tremendous sense that Britain is going to bounce back and flourish without the constraints of Europe and Covid. Our financial predicament will be a hindrance for a while to come no doubt, but the innate ingenuity and native cunning of Brits will see us rise from the ashes like a born-again Phoenix on speed, soaring to the sunny uplands of Bojo promise.
My only slight concern is what effect chlorinated chicken might have on my already overburdened gut. I am afraid I don’t have any statistics to hand (regular readers will know of my disdain for such things) as to the number of people in Britain who fall ill with salmonella poisoning each year, but I fancy it’s a very small number. On the whole, good husbandry and a hygienic kitchen lower the risk to almost zero. I’ve eaten a lot of chicken in my sixty nine years but have never fallen foul, so to speak. So why is it that mighty America feels it necessary to wash their foul in a poisonous chemical? Assuming that we achieve a significant trade deal with the US of A and they insist on inflicting their Genetically Maltreated crops and sanitised chickens on us, will we know what’s what? Presumably our strict food labelling laws will permit us to identify and boycott their abuses of nature? What a triumph of mob rule it would be if the imported goods rotted on supermarket shelves for lack of interest amongst our nation’s shoppers.
For now, half a delicious M&S turkey crown and the remnants of a roasted cow await our delectation; only a few antibiotics to worry about there, no doubt.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 