I’m debating whether I should send an email to the Prime Minister:

Subject: Paint

Dear Prime Minister

I am currently decorating my house, and would like to find a hard wearing paint for the front door. I have noticed that the doors to numbers 10 and 11 always look very smart. I’m assuming that this is not a trick of the television. What brand of paint do your use? I’d prefer not to have to repaint every year, and have the added problem that my street is not closed to traffic and guarded by a significant police presence, so there may be damage from terrorism that your door would not encounter. Nonetheless, what is good enough for you, is surely good enough for me.

With many thanks, in advance, for your advice,

Alex

I got in with the wrong crowd. They forced me. Led me to my fate – its inevitable that a stabler should lead to a filing tray. Admin screws you up. I know it now. Maybe I should go cold turkey. Stand by the shredder. Who knows.

There are a meagre 9 months until the target day: the culmination of efforts to establish a new market for an alternative snack, one that will feed children around the November bonfires whilst helping to alleviate pressure caused by a certain population. Toffee pigeons. Held via the stick of the legs, each bird can be cooked amongst the embers before being dipped in warm sugar. An ideal way to feed two cold children as they watch the fireworks. Or one particularly hungry child. Or a cat with a sweet tooth.

You may think that’s a crazy. That I’ve got the wrong solution. The wrong target. That the pigeons should be targeted second.

Don’t worry. They will be. Earlier – Halloween – there will be squirrel bobbing. No longer the dull pursuit of chasing fruit. With squirrel bobbing there will be the excitement of a live target. Of real sport. And of avoiding your face being sliced open by the claws of aggravated, drowning rodents.

I was sorry to hear about the news this year. Something that I’d worried about for years, and this year the thoughts of that child were confirmed in the news that adults feared to tell.

How could a man without a job manage to afford so much for so many people?

It was the move away from the hand-made and the wooden toys that heralded the end, the need for elves to help him to raid the shelves of Toys R Us rather than making toys from old bits of sleigh. In the light of this I’m surprised that Father Christmas managed to keep going for so long. But he did. Until this year.

I suppose that the manager of the shop was just doing his job. After all, any shoplifter is just that, and the later opening hours this year meant less and less time in each time or cultural zone for Santa to get his claws into the last confirmed decision of the children, and get something appropriate for them and their wants. But arrested. Not something that you’d ever expect to see.

Rudolph started to panic when the police came – three riot vans, and a taser that nearly stopped Christmas’ heart. Reindeer poo everywhere. They took him to the dog pound, the only home they could find, but apparently the red nose was cancerous so he was shot late last night. They haven’t yet been able to tell Father Christmas, as he’s still in court.

Ho ho ho

Happy Christmas to you all.

No-one is getting a card this year, because instead of buying you all platitudes I spent the money on a goat. Oxfam are currently wrapping it in crepe paper and bubble pack, and sending it somewhere where a Christmas goat will be appreciated.

If I shaved my hair off, I might look like this:

This morning I had an email telling me that I was to receive £4.6M in a will following the apparent death of an alledged relative somewhere in Nigeria. I didn’t know that I had a relative over there, so its a shame to hear about their demise in this way.

Oddly, someone else in the office received the same email. We’re not clear if that means we get £4.6M each, or if we have to share. But that’s not the point. Given that we’re both beneficiaries because we are related to the deceased, we must also be related to each other. What are the odds of that?! How surprising, that a morning in the office should turn into a highly lucrative family reunion.