ISLE LIKE NO OTHER
The Full List of 2020 BAFTA Winners
February 3, 2020
4 Unexpected Jewelry Trends Taking Over 2020
February 5, 2020
Fun and frolic
IN A FEB
FANTASY
LAND
Although you are reading this in February, aren’t you so glad that Christmas comes but once a year? No prejudice to the seasonal holiday; in fact, I mark it – well, religiously. But it’s all that commercial stuff, which prises open your jaw, and crams your mouth full of food, drink and other consumables until you’ve had it up to here.
And before you regurgitate that sentiment, let me confess that if there’s one thing more barf inducing than crass commercialism at Christmastime, it’s the pious hypo-crites who lament the passing of reason.
No, I didn’t clamber out of slumber on the wrong side of my bed this blessed morn. In fact, I’ve been for a rather bright and beautiful walk in the park… literally. All is well in our sunny isle these days, is it not? What was it, which that benighted poet we had to study suggested?
Ah yes, this: “The year’s at the spring and day’s at the morn; morning’s at seven, the hillside’s dew-pearled; the lark’s on the wing, the snail’s on the thorn; God’s in his heaven – all’s right with the world!”
But I missed seeing a couple of familiar faces as I sauntered beside the lake, beneath the trees. There were no fluttering daffodils dancing in the breeze – the poor folks in the rundown neighbourhood adjoining the stately pleasure dome that Kubla Khan decreed have gone missing in action.
No doubt they have been transported at government expense to some Xanadu or Shangri-la where their every whim and fancy is catered to by silken girls bringing sherbet? Best of all, there are no beggars to hymn us all on the trains I travel in occasionally.With that said, I’d do well to cease and desist this thinly veiled diatribe. For lo, danger approaches; not in the shape and form of some authoritative grim reaper or his henchmen but the big boss who wields the blue pencil. He terrifies me more than any strongman did or bureaucrat could.
We must all bow before the new mantra now, a time and season for everything being renewed under the sun. Who am I and what manner of minions in a sublime machine are we to stand in the way of growth, development and progress all around us?
BY Wijith DeChickera
Not choleric without cause am I. But sanguine with reason and within reason! And pleased to make your acquaintance in this brave new world with oh such people in it!
Moving on (and writing this as I’m at Christmastime… in a, er ‘spiritual’ frame of mind), I feel I must quibble a bit with a little misconception that’s doing the rounds as it does every year. Namely that ‘Christmas is for lovers.’
No, it is not. Well, maybe it could be charitable to include those dizzy fools in whose eyes the stars shine but it is rather more about that star-of-Bethlehem business and the blessings that the baby brings into the world. Isn’t it?
Be that as it may, Valentine’s Day is clearly for lovers. But would you mind it very much if I interjected that it is also a commercialised holiday of sorts set up to celebrate the bottom line of champagne makers, chocolatiers or confectioners and manufacturers of syrupy cards?
No, you would – and I know someone hovering over my shoulder who doesn’t think that’s funny!
By the way, the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. So while – with your permission – I celebrate the bold ethic of all things bright and beautiful, may I reserve the right also to carp and cavil, and quibble a little bit now and then, about the state of this earthly paradise we’re supposed to be inhabiting?
You can celebrate life like it’s Christmas every day, I suppose – as long as my champagne cork doesn’t bop you on the nose as it flies by to the moon… there’s no coming back from certain one-way trips, is there?
Fun and frolic
I N A F E B
FANTASY
LAND
Although you are reading this in February, aren’t you so glad that Christmas comes but once a year? No prejudice to the seasonal holiday; in fact, I mark it – well, religiously. But it’s all that commercial stuff, which prises open your jaw, and crams your mouth full of food, drink and other consumables until you’ve had it up to here.
And before you regurgitate that sentiment, let me confess that if there’s one thing more barf inducing than crass commercialism at Christmastime, it’s the pious hypo-crites who lament the passing of reason.
No, I didn’t clamber out of slumber on the wrong side of my bed this blessed morn. In fact, I’ve been for a rather bright and beautiful walk in the park… literally. All is well in our sunny isle these days, is it not? What was it, which that benighted poet we had to study suggested?
Ah yes, this: “The year’s at the spring and day’s at the morn; morning’s at seven, the hillside’s dew-pearled; the lark’s on the wing, the snail’s on the thorn; God’s in his heaven – all’s right with the world!”
But I missed seeing a couple of familiar faces as I sauntered beside the lake, beneath the trees. There were no fluttering daffodils dancing in the breeze – the poor folks in the rundown neighbourhood adjoining the stately pleasure dome that Kubla Khan decreed have gone missing in action.
No doubt they have been transported at government expense to some Xanadu or Shangri-la where their every whim and fancy is catered to by silken girls bringing sherbet? Best of all, there are no beggars to hymn us all on the trains I travel in occasionally.With that said, I’d do well to cease and desist this thinly veiled diatribe. For lo, danger approaches; not in the shape and form of some authoritative grim reaper or his henchmen but the big boss who wields the blue pencil. He terrifies me more than any strongman did or bureaucrat could.
We must all bow before the new mantra now, a time and season for everything being renewed under the sun. Who am I and what manner of minions in a sublime machine are we to stand in the way of growth, development and progress all around us?
Not choleric without cause am I. But sanguine with reason and within reason! And pleased to make your acquaintance in this brave new world with oh such people in it!
Moving on (and writing this as I’m at Christmastime… in a, er ‘spiritual’ frame of mind), I feel I must quibble a bit with a little misconception that’s doing the rounds as it does every year. Namely that ‘Christmas is for lovers.’
No, it is not. Well, maybe it could be charitable to include those dizzy fools in whose eyes the stars shine but it is rather more about that star-of-Bethlehem business and the blessings that the baby brings into the world. Isn’t it?
Be that as it may, Valentine’s Day is clearly for lovers. But would you mind it very much if I interjected that it is also a commercialised holiday of sorts set up to celebrate the bottom line of champagne makers, chocolatiers or confectioners and manufacturers of syrupy cards?
No, you would – and I know someone hovering over my shoulder who doesn’t think that’s funny!
By the way, the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. So while – with your permission – I celebrate the bold ethic of all things bright and beautiful, may I reserve the right also to carp and cavil, and quibble a little bit now and then, about the state of this earthly paradise we’re supposed to be inhabiting?
You can celebrate life like it’s Christmas every day, I suppose – as long as my champagne cork doesn’t bop you on the nose as it flies by to the moon… there’s no coming back from certain one-way trips, is there?
