Diary Archive

[Renegadenemo]

Hi Fred,

Thanks for looking at that for me - I bottomed the problem eventually with the diary entries from August onwards archived in the wrong folder and not on the website at all. We think they managed to get lost when the diary was archived and my copies somehow made their way into a folder of photographs from Christmas 2008. The PC Nativity was actually from Sept 2008 so we'll reinstate the diary at the earliest and in the meantime...

‘I’ve changed Merry Christmas to Seasonal Greetings because it seems the politically correct thing to do…’
I stared incredulously at the note accompanying our ruined Christmas card and hoped I’d been struck down with acute dyslexia.

*
It had all started a few weeks earlier when one of the girls suggested – well this one would never have come from a bloke, would it – that we made some Bluebird Project Christmas cards. A smart idea that quickly evolved to where we’d asked artist of note, Mr Arthur Benjamins, for permission to reproduce his painting, Christmas Run, on a card to raise funds for the rebuild.
Arthur charitably agreed to the use of his painting, (which you can see at www.Bluebirdpublications.com), so a transparency was borrowed and a layout suggested. A proof arrived presently for sign-off, which took no time at all because it looked great, and with it went the go-ahead to begin production. We eagerly awaited the arrival of a finished sample but what fell from the envelope was a disaster. I called the printer in full rant-mode.
“What did I spell wrong?” he asked.
“Merry bloody Christmas, that’s what!” I told him.
My outrage reached Large Hadron Collider proportions as he explained that this is not how things are done anymore. I mean, what happens if you send a Christmas card to someone who’s not a Christian? You’ll offend them… The word ‘bollocks’ springs to mind.
I was aghast and pointed out that such interference in Christmas was offending us and that the whole, Donald Campbell / Bluebird thing harks back to a time when Christmas was revered and celebrated in this country. Besides which, the likelihood of our card landing on the doormat of someone predisposed to offence over the matter is slim indeed.
What the hell are the PC-nutters up to this time? Keep your freaky hands off our Christmas! And as for Seasonal Greetings, who in their right mind wants to celebrate December? What a miserable month, if ever there was one, if not for Christmas.
Finding myself doing battle with do-good fruitcakes yet again I called a long-term associate who also happens to be a practitioner of the orthodox Jewish faith. We said our hellos and asked after the respective families before I hit him with it.
“Tell me,” I began, “you’re a Jewish bloke, so if I sent you a Christmas card with Merry Christmas in it, would you be offended?”
“Why would I?” he asked.
“Well the PC-fruit-loops want to modify our Bluebird Project cards so we don’t p*ss you off with our Merry Christmas stuff.”
On an ordinary day we call one another to discuss things to do with vans and metal so his mild perplexity was reasonable but his answer came without delay.
“I have loads of Christmas cards at home to send to friends this year,” he said thoughtfully (and I swear this next part is true), “but I have no idea what’s in them because, being Jewish, I bought them cheap in last year’s January sales and haven’t looked.”
Priceless…
Once I’d stopped laughing, and explained (to his bewilderment) that I’d never get away with such a thing because card-choosing/buying/sending is a national sport amongst our womenfolk, he made the point that he’d never be offended by our cards should I send him one and that, conversely, he’d actually be flattered by someone outside of his usual circle sending him a card in the first place. He then had a good bluster about his rabbi who wants him in the synagogue on a Saturday but he has to work so the rabbi comes off second-best and the compromise they’ve come up with in the evenings leaves him permanently knackered. I empathised best I knew how before we said our goodbyes.
Feeling a notch calmer I wandered over to the local Indian takeaway to see another pal. I call him Fred, an arrangement that suits us both because I can’t pronounce his real name and he likes Fred anyway. He hails from Bangladesh and makes a mean tandoori chicken.
“Fred, you’re a Muslim – would you be offended if…”
But Fred was puzzled by it all too, going so far as to point out that he and his buddies send us a few prayers from down the mosque at Christmas anyway. He celebrates Eid and sends cards to his mates at that time and I‘d actually be quite chuffed if Fred sent me an Eid card.
Nor can I recall a single cross word, whether at Christmas or any other time, with our old friend Zaid Al-Obaidi, the ‘Iraqi Tadpole’ and one of our most respected diving buddies from the Bluebird recovery operation as well as the many dives before and since.
Then I remembered that Rachel and I live near to a Sikh family who have a Christmas tree every year so on balance I reckon the PC-freaks are absolutely stuffed full of poo and cerebrally-constrained to say the least...
Think about it – they most definitely missed a trick in trying to ban Christmas. What they should’ve done was get to the bible first, have it rewritten by the social-working elite then promoted it as their own…

*
And so the non-corporeal emissary of a deity – being neither better nor worse only different – to its earthly followers visited Mary and told her that soon she’d bear progeny of the male gender.
“How can this be?” Mary asked, as despite her budding sexuality, she had thus far exercised her moral right to nonparticipation in the sexual act.
But the emissary assured her that such things were entirely possible under the deity’s direction whilst, typical of the male, power-structure of the day, which must not be compared to nor used to judge the present, no proposal was offered to meet any of the attendant paternal obligations; social, emotional or financial.
Mary rightfully resented such interference with her reproductive rights and vowed to establish a support group for similarly afflicted females but found no takers and was finally forced to grudgingly tolerate her unique predicament.
Nine months later her male partner in marriage, Joseph, having entered into an affiliation based on love and mutual trust was completely accepting of Mary’s version of events and arranged their travel to Bethlehem some 90 kilometres to the south to register in a census. This he accomplished by the enslavement of an odd-toed ungulate for their selfish desires, which without proper attention to its well being, was forced to walk the entire distance bearing the gestationally-advanced Mary on its back.
But Mary’s challenged urinary-endurance occasioned frequent dismounting and upon arrival the inevitable chronological-degradation of their timetable was exploited by an innkeeper with scant regard for the needs of the physically impaired, albeit by the transient condition of pregnancy.
Joseph pursued the honourable profession of carpentry but prevailing socio-economic circumstances had removed their family unit from the mainstream of monetary activity and left him with no option but to adapt, for birthing purposes, an unhygienic bovine housing facility without so much as a risk assessment on its likely effect on infant mortality.
Despite this, the male-progeny entered the world successfully and was wrapped in free-trade cloth and laid in such a way as to obstruct the feeding apparatus of the resident bovines with such selfish disregard for their ongoing amenity and welfare as is often exemplified by humans.
Meanwhile, the non-corporeal emissary visited a cooperative of sheep-enslavers on the hillside with news of the birth whilst simultaneously, in a healthy, socialist democracy far to the east, three males of allegedly enhanced-wisdom observed an astronomical phenomenon in the form of a bright star and wondered what it could mean.
Whereas the star may, or may not, have had any connection with the birth of the male-progeny, and no assumptions may be drawn, the men of allegedly enhanced-wisdom agreed democratically and unanimously to travel (reportedly on the backs of a trio of enslaved, even-toed ungulates) in its general direction until their arrival at the bovine housing facility. Upon arrival they offered gifts of a precious metal with the atomic number seventy-nine and two varieties of processed tree-sap raped from nature in an uncaring affront to the ecology of the region. Mary, in accordance with contemporary child-welfare guidelines, politely accepted these gifts then stored them carefully until the male progeny was old enough to interact with them safely.
Despite his disadvantaged entry into society the male-progeny subsequently developed into an adult of regular health and worked tirelessly within the community promoting the mammary-secretions of human kindness, curing those of an optically-bereft nature (though these benevolent acts did not render him a better or more deserving human animal) and rationalising the turbulent ethno-religious landscape into one, easy to understand philosophy until his unfortunate and untimely reduction to clinical-nonviability by the Romans.
Fortunately, being the immediate descendent of a deity, the male-progeny was able to overcome his unjust marginalisation and make a final, brief earthly appearance before leaving behind his human form and the name I uttered when I saw what they’d done to our bloody Christmas card!
‘Jesus Christ’
Said piece of paperwork has since been restored to its original specification...

[sheppane]

If this country is stupid enough to elect the party led by the son of the manse (strange phrase that) or as Clarkson calls him, ''that one eyed scottish git" , we can expect a whole lot more of that politically correct rubbish... or is that comment itself politically incorrect!

[Renegadenemo]

In the words of Billy Connolly - the desire to be a politician ought to ban you from ever becoming one...

[klingon]

The problem with political jokes is they keep on getting elected!-can hardly wait to see if the Conservatives win the election in England then try to talk their way out of the fact they have 1 MP for the whole of Scotland!-Hmm-passports at Carlisle I reckon.

[klingon]

and just to get real picky-Jesus Christ never existed-the individual known as that nowadays would have been called Iesu bar Yussef bin David-(there was no "j" in ancient aramaic-and "Christ" or kristos is greek for saviour-a nickname,so therefore he would have been called son of youssef or "joseph"-of the house of David-and thanks to the Gregorian calendar he was actually born in early March!-and here the lesson ends -personally I'm a Jedi!

[Renegadenemo]

and just to get real picky-Jesus Christ never existed-the individual known as that nowadays would have been called Iesu bar Yussef bin David-(there was no "j" in ancient aramaic-and "Christ" or kristos is greek for saviour-a nickname,so therefore he would have been called son of youssef or "joseph"-of the house of David-and thanks to the Gregorian calendar he was actually born in early March!-and here the lesson ends -personally I'm a Jedi!

Great stuff... I like things like that.