Christmas Illness

Being ill at Christmas is just perennial; like getting furious in Tescos and getting a Christmas haircut (an instinct so ingrained as to have cues grow outside Rocket barbers on Hackney Rd before opening time (beard meister Steve says he's grateful but I'm not so sure: he's certainly ill by now). I suppose we could add getting stuck in traffic on the A1 and total collapse of the East Coast Main Line. Perhaps the usual things we associate with Christmas are just brainwashing to get us over the time of year, that the early Christians were so fed up all being ill and stuck on the Appian Way in need of a haircut, that they invented a party.
However it is unfortunate the way it turned out; carols, presents, turkeys, cards and all the shit. I just can't bare it. In fact, the only solution found so far has to go further in to the dark side and confront the beast. To this end we watch little else at this time of year than the Christmas Channel. The Christmas Channel features an amazing collection of soppy stories usually running along the lines of single mum high in Appalachians with two kids and animals about to suffer foreclosure from the bank and rescued amidst snowfalls by reformed bank employee; or big bad wolf turned good. How people can even bring themselves to create such twaddle UNLESS in the pay of the C.I.A. is beyond me; but it is fascinating that such a cultural product simultaneously presents the most odious aspect of our culture with the lashings of nostalgia that actually support it; it brings new meaning not only to The Waltons, but Dave Hickey's enthusiasm for Norman Rockwell. Meanwhile I've realised Star Trek is far more significant than I had previously even considered (which was not much) just as long as I keep watching the Christmas Channel.
So on Boxing Day morning I'm glad to say a more stirring perennial event happens outside the door of my parents home in UK Disneyland, or rather outside the Black Horse in Elton; a vintage car rally. Seeing as a more egalitarian future on earth now seems as remote as a Model T; it is a pleasure to stand and gawp at such triumphs of engineering wizardry as a Rolls Royce so silent running it doesn't even purr (above right); or have your old childhood dreams or Corgi toys blown up and made real in the shape of Triumph Vitesse, or be transported in time and space to your dad's first Ford Popular. Now that makes me feel good.