Tuesday, 21 December 2021

d'Arsehole at Christmas

  

It was either Carl Jung or Fanny Craddock who once said that it was impossible for a human being to be unhappy while yodelling. Neither however expressed a view on the effects of having to ‘listen’ to other people yodelling on an almost continual basis.

As some of you may know, my lovely wife, Echinacea, is the town’s one and only practising yodel therapist (though I suspect there may be secret yodellers out there.) She’s back to conducting her sessions via Zoom as fears rise over this new Omigod variant. The sound of this is catastrophic. Bad enough Echi’s wild yelpings but as her group of twelve are ever-so-slightly out of synch with her and each other the combined sound is like feeding time in a monkey zoo. And a yodel version of Fairy Tale of New York is an experience that I may need counselling to come to terms with.

I commune with Winston, the family heron, in the garden. I think more and more these days that it is only he among the sentient that truly understands me.

The daughter, Avocado, has locked herself in her room with her Christmas tears over Pishy Pete who sleeps behind the bins on Bath Street. He has formed some amorous alliance with the barmaid from a local hostelry (The Gideon? The Circles of Hell?) and is said to be ‘on the razzle’ in some neighbouring locale (Craigniddrie? Lochentinny?).

Young Seb busies himself obsessively with his lenticular bridge-building, and Echi has her yodelling and her feminist embroidery group. But, what of me? Sure, I have my muesli recipes and my band, The Expensive Chinos, but, and it’s maybe the time of year, I feel there’s a void in my life.

Next year, perhaps, the world may see a different Josh d’Arsehole.

Porro et sursum as they used to say in the upper sixth!

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