A Christmas Story

I am sitting in London's oldest restaurant, Rules, a bustling place where the aroma of roasts mingle with the colours of red velvet, rich brown wood, lead glass lamps and Christmas decorations.

“Did you know that Rules is 210 years old this year?" I hear a man’s voice next to me.

I glance to my right in the direction of the voice and find only an empty seat.

"Young man,” I hear the man from nowhere again. “There were times when, as a poor child I stood out there with my nose pressed against the window, peering in. Fortunately, later I made good money and was able to come and eat here quite often.They have even named a room after me," he ended with a chuckle.

"Where are you?” I ask, feeling a little ill at ease.

"Next to you."

"I don't see anybody."

"That's because I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"What?"

“I am the Ghost of Charles Dickens. I am the man who brought the words ‘merry’ and ‘Christmas’ together in my book A Christmas Carol. Have you ever read it?”

"I have seen it in the theatre."

Silence.

"Tonight my wife and I actually saw Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the Adelphi Theatre close by after which we came over here for dinner. She's just quickly gone to the Ladies," I tell the Ghost.

"I was wondering why you were alone. Christmas is a time for getting together, for sharing and giving."

"Yes, Mr Dickens, but unfortunately there are also many Christmas grumblers these days who contend that it makes sense to say that Christmas does not make sense, that it has become too commercial - just a Clickmas."

“Clickmas?”

“A Clickmas of purchases over the Internet," I whisper when I notice a lady staring at me as if I am mad and apparently talking to myself.

"I am not aware of Clickmas but I do know that gifts should be reciprocal."

"Yes," I reply. “But where reciprocity becomes difficult, such as with small children, we have created a fictional character - Father Christmas. In a way when children one day learn that Father Christmas does not exist it is also a lesson for them to think in terms of reciprocity."

"I suppose you are right young man but now please tell me what does the world look like over this Christmas period?"

"We are in an economic recession. I was in Dubai the other day…”

"Dubai?”

“It's a place in Arabia with thriving construction. And yet even there the economy is pinching. There are now two new entries on the list of endangered species: Dubai’s national animal, the bulldozer, and Dubai’s national bird, the crane."

"I do not understand that."

Obviously ghosts lack a spirit of humour.

“In a way it all relates to Pavlov's dog."

"Pavlov?"

"Yes. Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine a century ago with his experiments on dogs,” I whisper. “He prompted dogs to drool at the sounds of bells which they associated with food. Economic life is driven by people’s expectations. Therefore many governments, including Britain’s, these days believe that companies and people will react like Pavlov's dogs precisely in line with predetermined expectations when given financial stimulus. As a political Christmas present the British government this year cut taxes and promised money in order to create a kind of spending drool."

"It sounds to me as if your government here is, in the end, like my character Ebenezer Scrooge, generous and kind.”

"Not really Mister Dickens. The crisis resulted from excessive private debt and government is now trying to solve that by raising excessive government debt – which will, one day, have to be paid back by today's teenagers. The state is giving now but stealing from the future. And British subjects are not Pavlov's dogs. In spite of all the money pumped into the economy those banks, companies and people do just exactly what they want."

"So there is an ominous Ghost of Christmas in the Future?”

“Exactly, Mister Dickens, but then the future also lies in the past. Maybe the way out of the Christmas of the Present, this Christmas of Recession, would be one of creative destruction by entrepreneurs. Henry Ford, for example, built model-T Ford cars when people expected faster horse carriages."

"So, creative destruction also creates new expectations…”

"Precisely. Destruction in the winter leads to growth in spring. I think the government here is just keeping alive a bunch of things that should actually be allowed to disappear."

"Harsh words, young man. At least the people are receiving something, even if it sounds more like a loan than a gift."

I notice my wife returning to our table.

"May I introduce you to my wife …”

"Sorry young man, but I must go. I enjoyed our talk."

“I was honoured, Mister Dickens.”

My wife sits down and asks: "Have you been speaking to somebody?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe I just entered into the spirit of Christmas.”

Then I clearly hear these last words from the empty chair next to me:”Young man, to you and your wife a very merry Christmas. As Tiny Tim observed, God bless us everyone!"

Can the “political Messiah” levy a penalty tax on himself?

Politics is a contagious disease - almost hereditary; you get it from those who had been previously in power.

Politics is also incurable; it is a permanent healing campaign against those ailments left behind by previous rulers.

In this way the USA originated as a campaign of healing in British America - Britain's erstwhile North American colonies of the 18th and 19th century.

Today I am writing a letter from British America and in particular from Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, one of those former British American colonies.

It is November 4, 2008. This historic day will end hysterically with a crowd welcoming Barack Obama in Chicago as America's 44th president-elect.

Mid-morning my friend Dan Fuller and I enter the polling station in the St. Andrew By-the-Sea church hall on Hilton Head Island. The four polling station officials at the head table ignore me as I stand around reading posters and trying to appear as local as a Hilton Head golf course alligator.

Luckily it's Tuesday. If it had been a Sunday I would have had to come to church with a rifle. Apparently South Carolina still has a law making it compulsory for an adult male to bring a rifle to church on Sundays in case of potential Red Indian attacks.

Yes really.

But then again an archaic American law also stipulates that Presidential elections have to take place on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November so that farmers can travel from farms to towns and back without missing church on Sunday and, in the case of South Carolina of course, to be in church with a rifle in hand keeping an eye on ill-humoured Red Indians.

Dan hovers attentively in voting mode over one of four electronic touch screens.

This is a life or death election struggle here on Hilton Head. In addition to the Presidential candidates there is a string of other positions on the election list including that of the local coroner. For a moment I wonder how much work the alligators on the island's golf courses create for the elected coroner every year.

South Carolina is conservatively Republican. In 1860 it was the first state to leave the USA in order to retain slavery - an argument that led to the American Civil War.

According to Dan Fuller most voters in South Carolina think that Barack Obama would want to increase taxes. And taxes are serious food for thought in South Carolina. After all, it was in protest against the taxes of King George III that South Carolina also unilaterally left British America to form the USA with 12 other states in 1776.

Suddenly I wonder what the conservative voters in the church hall would say if they were to know that I was standing around as a descendant of a certain George Rex of Knysna in South Africa. According to rumour, although there are counterarguments, my ancestor, George Rex was said to have been the illegitimate son of the selfsame mad King George III from whom South Carolina had broken away.

On the other hand they would probably have approved of my anti-English grandfather George and his sister Rex. Granddad George, a Boer prisoner of war in Ceylon, refused to return to South Africa and live under a British flag in 1902. Instead he went to Argentina and lived there for 12 years as a gaucho (cowboy). Luckily for me, at the outbreak of a rebellion in South Africa in 1914, he decided to say "adios" to Buenos Aires and whisper "hello girl" to my grandmother in South Africa.

My friend Dan nods and we leave the polling station.

Later on, when Dan is already at his office, I sit with a Phillips screwdriver in hand on a carpet with 12 wood panels strewn around me like autumn leaves and bags of screws and bolts in front of me reading the assembly instructions for a desk that I am trying to put together.

Panel number three has a sticker which declares that the whole caboodle was manufactured in China.

"You know," I tell my wife, "Barack Obama said on TV yesterday that he would levy a penalty tax on those American firms that outsource American jobs to countries like China. Here I am now, sitting flat on my bum, and what have the Chinese done? They have outsourced their labour to me here in the USA to build their desk. The Chinese government will definitely not think of a penalty tax on the Chinese firm. Do you think Obama understands international trade?"

"Well, many people regard him as a kind of political Messiah. He will definitely be voted in," she replies.

My wife has a sharp brain and I have two left hands.

I just keep on plugging away at assembling my desk.

Later that evening we sit in front of the television and watch millions of people in emotional ecstasy over Obama’s victory.

And in my mind’s eye I see a few workers the next day as they change information signs at the White House.

At the fountain in the White House garden a sign that says: “Do not walk on the water please. Thank you."

On the wall in the President's personal toilet over his wash-basin a sign that states: "Don't change the water into wine please. Thank you."

And I wonder if those stickers on the back of the White House signs would state: “Made in China."

The chances are probably good that the tools of the White House workers would in any case be of Chinese origin.

And then I wonder whether the President of America could levy a penalty tax on himself.

Good fairies ensure that orphans do not become islands

Appeared on 30 June 2008 in South Africa as Letter from Britain column.

Islands are quite romantic - almost as romantic as a crowd of grown men who hug each other in tears because another man kicked a ball very well.

Romantic Key West is the last island on the southernmost tip of Florida, 90 miles from Cuba. There you can visit the house of Ernest Hemingway where he kept polydactylous cats with six or more toes on their paws. A few polydactylous feline descendants still hang around today in the garden at their watering hole - a urinal that Hemingway found in the gentlemen's toilet of his favourite bar, Sloppy Joe's.

A few years ago my wife and I walked out on to the tarmac of the Key West Airport towards a red Tiger Moth type biplane where our pilot, a short man with a long CV, handed us each a Snoopy aviator’s cap and goggle. The two of us piled into an open cockpit at the front whilst the pilot manned a second cockpit behind us, presumably so that he could see when and where we fall out and know where to direct search parties to look for us.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger lawnmower engine sang and we took off.

My flying goggles were a mess of greasy finger prints. Would previous aviators have been so afraid that they closed their eyes by holding their hands over their goggles? Then I noticed that my wife had to use a hand to hold her goggles tight as they were too big for her.

The wind from the single propeller, an arm’s length in front of us, flattened our goggled faces into frozen grins. We swooped low over Key West and floated out over the sea with snorkellers, graceful manta rays, yachts, cruise ships and a batch of eight sharks below us.

Under a bright sun and over a blue sea we became birds.

That happened years ago.

A few days ago we travelled by ferry to another island - this time the Isle of Man - in the Irish Sea between Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland.

Man, a self-governing British Crown possession, with 80,000 inhabitants and probably the world's oldest continuous parliament since 979 AD, is steeped in Celtic mythology.

The Celts believe in reincarnation but also that, after death, certain souls linger around as spirits and fairies. Almost like the current Great Soul of Zimbabwe who has clearly been politically dead for quite some time but keeps hanging around and haunting his people.

One of the Celtic lingering souls was a Fairy King, Manannan Mac Lir, who lived on the Promised Land of Man and possessed such amazing magical powers that he could conjure up a thick cloud to envelop the island and its people so that aggressors could not find and attack them.

Well, on 21 June this year, Manannan really worked hard with his cloud to ward off outsiders. The longest day of the year, Midsummer's day, was the second wettest officially recorded June day ever on the Isle of Man with torrential rain and gale force winds.

On that Midsummer's day my wife, Sharon and a colleague, Nerene, took part in a punishing road walk, the Parish Walk, over 85 miles around the island to be completed within 24 hours and during which participants had to clock in at 17 Parish church doors. (I believe that for many participants that was the sum total of their church attendance for the year.)

As they battled in the cloud of Manannan against horizontal gusts of icily cold torrential rain I fought bravely alongside them behind the steering wheel in my support vehicle, attacking the foot pedals with great energy and executing a number of very exhausting seat position changes. Their trainers were soaked to such an extent that I expected them to grow extra toes and end up with polydactylous feet. Midsummer's day on Man was wetter than the worst rainy day in South Africa and colder than the heart of the Great Soul of Zimbabwe.

Where is global warming when you need it?

At the eighth Parish church, out of 17, the most powerful known English assault weapon entered the battle – Twinings Tea - and they called a halt.

Of the 1599 entrants only 121 withstood the cold to finish the 85 miles with their brains frozen for medical research purposes.

Why did Sharon and Nerene participate?

Charity.

Four centuries ago John Donne, the London poet and preacher, wrote: “No man is an island”. People cannot prosper if they are isolated from others.

The Isle of Man might well be an island but man, in the broader sense, is not.

By taking part in the Parish Walk Sharon and Nerene raised funds for the general care, schooling and boarding of a nine-year old boy in South Africa, Mthoko.

Mthoko has never known a father and his mother suffers from Aids.

A child like Mthoko could very easily have become an island.

In their battle against Manannan’s weather Sharon and Nerene collected sufficient money to cover two years’ cost of caring for Mthoko.

Manannan might be the difficult Fairy King of the Isle of Man but on Midsummer's day this year I saw two Good Fairies.

Oh, and the Great Soul of Zimbabwe should really take the time to read John Donne’s full text on man and island which ends with the words: “… for whom the bell tolls; it tells for thee”.

Hemingway used that as the title for a book.

It applies to politicians with polydactylous fingers in the pie; and maybe to all of us.

How to ignore an earthquake

Published on 10 March 2008 as part of my Letter from Britain newspaper column in South Africa. Not much has chnaged on these issues since then.

I sympathise with my wife.

Years ago she accepted my heart. Now she is saddled with the rest of my body parts - including a gramophone record face that snores at night on the pillow next to her.

Unsurprisingly I am a deep sleeper and she is a light sleeper.

That explains why she was wide awake a few nights ago right through Britain's most violent earthquake in 25 years whilst I slept on untroubled next to her.

To me the earthquake, which measured 5.2 on the Richter scale, proved empirically that there are no ghosts in our house because not a single skeleton fell out of any cupboard.

However, it also proved that women are more awake than men. My wife even sensed the earthquake beforehand.

And so the question arose: Seeing that women have been ruling the world as micro regents for so long, has the time not arrived for a woman to once again rule Britain?

A Margaret Thatcher. Someone with prescience and an ear for political earthquakes.

Half of the male bunch currently in control of Britain are tragically hard of hearing and the rest come from the Ministry for National Ignorance.

Prime Minister Boredom, apologies, Gordon Brown is a man off undeviating indecision and ambiguity that rings clear as a bell - a man who, in 2007, half-heartedly hinted at an election and then ran away. He was so indecisive in the case of Northern Rock, the troubled bank situated in the heartland of his party’s supporters, that he dithered for many months on private sector solutions and then nationalised the bank with government guarantees of £100 billion.

Yes comrades, Northern Rock is a glorious victory for the proletariat! Our People's Bank is a milestone in the Cultural Revolution against all despicable capitalists - particularly those recalcitrant individuals who would have used their detestable capital to disadvantage our dearest compatriots in the Northern Rock region. Away with Richard Bransonism! Viva superior socialism! With central planning our People's Bank will be victorious in the competitive struggle against all underhanded capitalist banks!

Dear reader, we apologise for this unsolicited interruption.

More than one third of Britain’s total production today emanates from the financial and business sectors - to a large degree due to tax incentives for non-domiciled residents which created massive capital inflow. The multiplier effect of these people and their money has been phenomenal.

In a recent war to gain votes all political parties suddenly agreed that the tax incentives for non-domiciled residents, most of whom by sheer coincidence have no voting rights, should be withdrawn once they remain longer than seven years in the UK.

In 2006 South Africa almost approved a law that would have precluded foreigners from purchasing houses in South Africa. The reason behind that was that some South Africans complained that they were being priced out of the housing market. Fortunately the South African government saw the light because foreign inward capital flow is indeed similar to an easy export product at minimal cost. Yes, South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel is not just a beautiful face.

Now, at a time of tales of recession and nationalisation, similar complaints from locals in Britain have led to a point where Britain now actively encourages capital flight. According to the Lord Mayor of London the net loss of the non-domiciled withdrawal of incentives, just in the Square mile of the City, could amount to £1.2 billion.

How could these Martians in control not sense the financial earthquake? How could they ignore the negative multiplier effect, the impending decline of London as a financial centre, the repositioning of head offices in London as branches of head offices from elsewhere - and that Britain would become nothing more than a book entry from elsewhere?

We interrupt this imperialistic Letter from Britain.

Workers of Britain, unite!

Just like Comrade Fidel Castro chased away the hated foreign capitalists from his soil in 1959 and transformed Cuba into an economic paradise, our heroic leader, comrade Gordonov Brownski, today delivers to you a new dawn for a progressive future! Away with the treacherous non-domiciled reactionary oligarchs! With our brave central planners we will chase these money schemers to the far corners of Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Geneva and Monaco! We will drive all shipping oligarchs back to Athens and those American financial vultures back to their nests in Wall Street!

Comrades, house prices will fall so that you can afford housing. Our People's Bank, Northern Rock, will support you with financing. Restaurants and hotels will not be crowded any more with abominable non-domiciles. No, those entities will stand empty for you, our beloved proletariat.

Rest assured that unfaithful private doctors will lose their contaminated non-domiciled support and will return as loyal government labourers to the heart of our beloved National Health Service. As you know, comrades, our outstanding government pays excellent salaries to all 1.4 million state workers in the National Health Service, including medical doctors. Comrades, take pride in this outstanding body - the fifth largest employer in the world - where you now have to wait a mere 45 to 77 weeks for a trauma or orthopaedic procedure such as a hip operation.

Comrades, here at the Westminster Politburo there are rumblings from below and we know that this is the wave of patriotism, collectivism and proletarian internationalism beneath our feet.

Comrades rest assured, we are there for you. From now on you can sleep in tranquillity.

Rest in peace.

Report from Battle Zone Marseille on the Sixth Rugby World Mimic War

First published as Lettr from Britain in South Africa on 12 October 2007.

It is relatively unknown that the most well-known propaganda photograph of World War II was taken in St. Peter Port, the capital of the Channel Island Guernsey – the only patch of Britain where the swastika ever fluttered.

In 1940 a German military band, followed by 400 German troops, marched past the front door of Lloyds Bank in Guernsey, providing the Germans with triumphant photographic evidence of their occupation of British soil.

This reminded me of the Prussian soldier, Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz – a man with a long name but a short message: War is the continuation of politics by other means.

I would have wanted to add that international sport is the continuation of war by other means but, dammit, George Orwell stole a march on me when he wrote in 1945 that international sport was mimic war.

I can therefore probably only add to Orwell and Guernsey 1940 by stating: Mimic foot soldiers march through mimic wars.

And so, with the greatest humility, I herewith report on my role and that of mimic soldier, Hannes, in the events that took place in the Battle Zone Marseille over the first weekend of October 2007 during the Sixth Rugby World Mimic War.

On our Air France flight I swore I saw another mimic soldier reading the French military magazine, Le Drapeau Blanc (The White Flag), with a front page article on arm exercises to hold up your hands three times longer.

We flew to Marseille, which became the birthplace of the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, when 500 volunteers marched from there to Paris singing the Marseillaise as a rallying call to arms during the French Revolution.

And so it came to pass that, right there in Marseille, Hannes and I noticed a slight French schizophrenia.

Introduce yourself and the French will gently respond that they are enchanted to meet you by saying “enchanté”. Unfortunately French mimic soldiers have a more antagonistic message to foreigners when they sing their anthem and boom out the refrain:

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions!
Let us march!
Let us march!
Until impure blood
Waters our furrows!
I must confess that I am actually quite fond of my blood circulation and I was therefore glad that, over our weekend in Marseille, the French were obliged to battle against New Zealand on faraway foreign acres of furrows. Nonetheless, on the night after the French victory at the Battle of Cardiff there was such a din of blaring hooters in the streets of the South of France that I expected at any time to see 500 French volunteers forming battalions and advancing towards Paris.

During the time Hannes and I saw action in Marseille we experienced excellent logistics (trains, buses and underground connections) but the mustering of mimic troops was so intense that we landed in our first scrum in the double-decker train on the way to our clandestine support for England in the mimic clash against Australia.

I can report back that the English victors were so overcome with joy that 500 of them immediately stormed out of the Stade Vélodrome and marched on Paris singing the inciting song: We Bonked Matilda, We Bonked Matilda!

In the dark hours before the battle between South Africa and Fiji, Hannes and I soothed our nerves with a few fizzy adult beverages in Marseille’s Old Harbour – a misnomer really because the Germans bombed the old harbour out of this world in the war.

But then, what you don’t see is what you get in France.

However, I did actually see something special in action in the Old Harbour - Darwin’s theory of evolution.

With intense superficial research I discovered two new offshoots from Wise Man (Homo Sapiens) namely mimic soldier Rugby Man (a considerate species herding according to group colour) and Vuvuzela Man (an inconsiderate, cross-eyed species of green and gold loners with long plastic trumpets and South African accents).

Vuvuzela Man sits in enclosed spaces, such as restaurants, and compensates for his obvious Freudian male physical shortcomings by blowing on very long plastic trumpets, called Vuvuzelas, chasing away Rugby man with a monotonous loud fanfare that rhymes with I’m-an-idiot! I’m-an-idiot!

Could someone not please capture the African inventor of the Vuvuzela, tie him up for 80 minutes (preferably by his Freudian physical shortcomings) and blow two Vuvuzelas incessantly in his ears?

Hannes, my brother in mimic arms, gave Vuvuzela man a scowl that was strong enough for a push over try under the goalposts against the whole Fijian scrum.

In the end South Africa did not have to make use of Hannes’s scowl to beat Fiji because South Africa had their secret attack weapons Lucky Ball® and FiveCannonTry™. Fiji’s star player was Verrihitaklar Andayelokaarti.

The victory brought about great collective effervescence among all South African mimic troops but, at the same time, it created collective despondency among all those wretched wounded Australian mimic soldiers who had spilled over in support of Fiji from the previous day’s Battle against England.

It was poignantly sad to experience so closely at hand so many tragic cases of Australian NBDV (National Brain Defect Virus).

The Battle against Fiji was extremely tiring – even for the 30 players - but Hannes and I were at such a peak in our watch fitness that we survived the ordeal and were able afterwards to celebrate with thousands of other mimic soldiers at several liquid victory festivities hosted at pavement oases.

As I write this report the Sixth Rugby World Mimic War is, of course, still raging in France.

I sincerely hope that, as mimic soldiers, our humble military mimic service and tactical inputs in Battle Zone Marseille will have contributed to World Peace – or, at least, victory for our own forces.

I predict our official V-day on 20 October 2007.

We must remain courageous and not lose spirit.

Remember, fatalism is a dying philosophy.