Hello, friends, colleagues, miscellaneous associates, and bitter, regretful, former partners now comfort-eating their way towards the local coronary care department. Let me ask, what most says 'Christmas' to you?

No doubt the majority of you replied, "Well, for me, it's a picture of the lavatory in that decommissioned Soviet submarine docked at Hamburg into which Mil has sloppily pasted a sprig of copyright-free holly."

Yes, that would be the standard reply - which is why I've made this upper section of the card for you. Please feel free to print it out, fold it in half, and then hang it in your living room; perhaps over a string that arcs across your wall like a big smile; perhaps like the big stringy smile of a wall that's amused by your pain - the huge, misshapen lips mocking your internalised fury and isolation. 

However, in the long ninety seconds or so it took me to knock up this year's Christmas card from our family to all of you, I got to thinking. What is it that really says, 'Christmas'? Opening presents? The Coke Cola-designed Santa? A plainly made-up story so blatantly made up that even the compilers of Luke and Matthew accidentally made up two different versions of it?

No, I don't think so. I think, in fact, that it might just be taking a moment to appreciate one's good fortune - allotting time to contemplate how very much worse things could conceivably be, and to acknowledge the various snowflakes of good fortune that have settled upon one's lucky nose during the past year. And so, that's what I'm going to do.

* Like the time I went to Asda and got a really great parking space. Heaving a disobedient trolley - angry with Fair Trade bananas and Best Not To Think About It, Smart Price orange juice - virtually all the way back to the entrance? Not today, my friends: not... today. For there, as I performed the usual dispiriting circuit, an absolutely fabulous space lay open before me. I was so overcome by emotion that, after I pulled in, I got out and took a photo of it with my phone. Look at it. LOOK AT IT. That image has not been digitally manipulated in any way. Man... that I've lived to see such things.

* Like German crackers. Want to see a gift from a German cracker? OK. I've included my hand in the picture, for scale, and you should also note that THIS is made from heavy stainless steel. The British cracker's 'tiny plastic hair grip' doesn't seems such a big deal now, does it? Obviously, a carelessly-dropped box of German crackers might shatter your quarry tiles or kill a medium-sized dog, but that's a risk I'm well willing to take. I, like any man, want Christmas cracker novelties guaranteed to get you wrestled to the ground at airport security.

* Like seeing First Born come home from school the other day, beaming and exuberant - his young face rosy with simple, innocent joy. "That," he said as he strode brightly through the doorway, "was the best detention ever."

* Like the builder leaving our extension half complete and disappearing; but then - two weeks later - getting an email from him. The sheer unclenching relief that he'd got back in touch somehow making it almost trivial that he was emailing from Basle.

* Like... Well, you get the idea. However, if you wish to give the world a pat on the back by recording your own brushes with the moderately unrubbish during the year, then why not stride your cheerily whistling lips over to:
Tiny Boons
and write on The Wall, or something? I mean, it's not like you've got anything else you'd rather be doing, right?
(NB. If you need to tell me a thing of some sort, do not Message me using Facebook in any fashion whatsoever. I hardly ever look at my Facebook page and even less often check its Messages. If you wish to send me anything, use the email address under 'Contact Info: Email' on the Tiny Boons page or the one on my homepage at TMGAIHAA. Unless you're Alyson Hannigan, in which case come straight over to my house - Margret's generally out until about 4.00pm, but it's best to climb over the back wall anyway, just in case.)

Anyway, ladies and gentlemen: the creamiest of Best Wishes to you all of you out there from all of us in here, and may every one of your days this yuletide feel like softly nuzzling into a beloved neck.

Mil.

www.mil-millington.com - Home of the Repeated Counter Crash for over a decade.