It’s half past five on the 22nd, and already we are so exhausted we could sleep for a week. We have yet to visit one relative, or hang a stocking, and there’s a whole day to go before Christmas Eve. But that’s it. We’re out. We have an appointment with a long winter’s nap. See you next year.
Assuming we don’t, in fact, wander off to sleep to rival the Marschallin Cat and the Buffy Dachshund, it will be purely because we subsist on tea and holiday baking.
Today it was a green tea, Korean Sejak, that per weird calendar tradition, still lacked capital letters despite featuring a proper noun in the title. It’s a nutty green tea, and it almost had enough caffeine to revive us after driving back and forth to the thriving metropolis of Guelph, Ontario.
(Guelph is not, for those outsider-readers, the alien Dr Who forgot to feature, much as it really should be. It’s a little town in the middle-of-nowhere, Ontario, and when we lived in St Andrews, we met the one other Canadian to know where this place was. He ran student support, and he was a local legend. Malcolm is now one of the Seven Wonders of Guelph. Also on that list; The Floral Clock and The Speed River, which is one of the best misnomers going.)
For most people, driving there-and-back-again is enough for one day, but no. We had to put the marzipan on the Christmas cake, and we had to wrap the gifts, because our family is doing a pre-emptive Christmas Eve tomorrow. This means tomorrow doesn’t exist and somehow our two-day holiday has ballooned into a three-day one.
Query for the universe; Why, knowing all that would be the case, would you stick us with the lurgy to end all lurgies the week of an Advent IV-Christmas Eve hybrid?! Whose clever idea was that, and who did we offend? Asking, so that going forward, we do everything in our power to never offend them the same way ever again.
On the plus side…We can almost breathe through our nose again. Almost. The hacking cough is still around, too. But, you know what? We’re at the stage where we’ll take almost breathing through our nose. Let’s call that a win.
All to say, you’re getting the last of our stockpiled poems tonight. Fair warning; This one famously traumatized a whole generation of Australian English students. The thing is, we sincerely like it. And Advent is supposed to be a penitential season. So…enjoy?
And A Good Friday Was Had By All
Bruce Dawe
You men there, keep those women back
and God Almighty he laid down
on the crossed timber and old Silenus
my offsider looked at me as if to say
nice work for soldiers, your mind’s not your own
once you sign that dotted line Ave Caesar
and all that malarkey Imperator Rex
well this Nazarene
didn’t make it any easier
really-not like the ones
who kick up a fuss so you can
do your block and take it out on them
Silenus
held the spikes steady and I let fly
with the sledge-hammer, not looking
on the downswing trying hard not to hear
over the women’s wailing the bones give way
the iron shocking the dumb wood.
Orders is orders, I said after it was over
nothing personal you understand -we had a
drill-sergeant once thought he was God but he wasn’t
a patch on you
then we hauled on the ropes
and he rose in the hot air
like a diver just leaving the springboard, arms spread
so it seemed
over the whole damned creation
over the big men who must have had it in for him
and the curious ones who’ll watch anything if it’s free
with only the usual women caring anywhere
and a blind man in tears.
Tell you what, we’ll try and spend what’s left of our thoroughly residual brain power sourcing something happier for the penultimate day of Advent. Over a cup of really strong tea, ideally.
Chorister at Home 