2014 - by the numbers

The only way to open a post for the New Year is to find a suitable cliche.

How about

"As we come to the end of another year..."

or

"As we look forward with anticipation to another great year ... "

or, perhaps more honestly:

"As we dream, yet again, that the little fairy that ignites the midnight fireworks will grant us a new and more tenacious personality and better financial management skills ...."

No, that's far too cynical for a night of collective delusion and unfounded hopes. Let's go with 

"As we bring 2014 to a close ..."

As we bring 2014 to a close, it's time to reflect on the key numbers of the year that's been. Here are the key statistics of our lives:

470, 654. The number of litres of milk wasted by people not wanting to eat putty and so getting the WeetBix / Milk ratio wrong, and having to tip the left-over down the sink.

53,008. The number of pieces of Lego inadvertently consumed by kids, and parents who should know better, while prying the difficult bits apart with their teeth.

9, 322, 934. The number of column inches in newspapers devoted to speculation and predictions about the economy.

3. The number of economic pundits in the newspaper that were right about anything at all, including their own names.

6.23 X 10^23. The number of refreshes on Facebook made in the hope that someone, somewhere was doing something more interesting than us and would post about it, thereby giving us a distraction from the tedious, non-Hollywood humdrum of our daily existence.

12. The number of kids who actually got down from there, reflected on the irresponsibility of their decision and never went up there again.

50 cents. The average real benefit we all got from loyalty programs and frequent shopper points this year.

2. The number of winners from reality TV shows this year that you can still name; throwing into sharp relief the efficacy of their bid for immortal fame.

1,248. The number of people this year whose combination of astounding ignorance and insistent opinions have left me almost exactly balanced between profound disbelief and an aching to be the agent of natural selection.

9.2 X 10^15. The number of WeightWatchers points that have been discounted from the daily allowance by a process of self-delusion and a method of mental accountancy that multi-national corporations would pay good money to get access to.

44,500,013. The number of real estate agent ads that have described the property in question as "neat as a pin" - whatever that's supposed to mean.

54. The average number of thoughts we've each had about cyclists on the road, immigrants, religious groups, bogans, fat people etc that we're ashamed to admit, even to ourselves.

25 mL. The total extra we've managed to get into our fuel tanks by giving the bowser handle just one more squeeze, even though it's clicked-off because the tank was already full. In total, we've managed to average an extra 100m between fuelling stops as a result.

127. The daily average of sentences my 6 year old has started with "Dad, Guess what" to make sure I'm really listening not just randomly cycling through "Uh-huh", "Good" and "Really!"

What are the key numbers of your year?

The perfect gift

About this time of the year we are all exhorted to discover "that perfect gift". I'm not sure why "that" rather than "the" but I assume it makes it sound more special and worthy.

What is "that perfect gift"? I doubt any one gift is perfect for everyone in all situations. Some people would be ecstatic about a set of Jamie Oliver saucepans, others would take it as a sign of where their partner thinks they should be spending their time and might use them in a way that would we described as "blunt instruments" in the subsequent police reports. I think we are suffering from a lack of clarity of understanding; what is 'perfect'?. So, as a public service, allow me to explore the concept for you:

Start with "Why do we give gifts?"

Now that is a tricksy question but it is in the answer to that question that we can, I believe, come to an understanding of perfection.

A gift is a form of communication from one person to another. I am, presumably, saying something to someone when I give them something. This is why giving flowers to a woman not your wife is not OK and giving signed copies of Kim Kardashian's latest abomination is internationally recognised as casus belli.

Do we give a gift because we enjoy the process? On the whole, I doubt it. Having been to the shops near Christmas and seen the amount of alcohol consumed on the day itself - mostly as a celebration that the whole traumatic experience is finally over - I don't think there's much joy in the act of giving.

So we want something in return.

Sex: Always a good starting point. The word should appear above the fold in the blog and grab a few people's attention. How do I convey that I want sex in return for my gift? Rule one of gift giving is that you can't be explicit - either with your message or with the gift itself, unless you know the person really well. You have to suggest sex - not turkey slap the recipient with the special massager. Perfume might be good - hinting at pheromones. Maybe something with phallic connotations? A screwdriver? Or is that just a little too obvious?

Jealousy. If I want jealousy in return for my gift, I need to lash out with the credit card. A paper that I read the other day listed "Gifts for him" including a $350,000 car and a $56,000 watch. That kind of gift would make other people jealous that they weren't rich enough to give such a thing. It's probably the sort of gift that the recipient wants in order to inspire jealousy in others, too. But does it work? I know the difference between a $19,990 + on road costs Kia buzz-box, and a red sporty thing with insufficient leg room for us tall guys but beyond that ... no. The only people that could tell the difference between a $100,000 sports car and a $350,000 sports car are people who have enough money to be interested in such things. And they aren't going to be jealous of your money - they have enough of their own. Similarly with watches. And as for the $9,000 cocktail jacket - looking at it, the only two thoughts that came to mind were: "Whose bedspread was it made from?" and "Do they make it for men?"

Pay down the debt: Another reason I might give a gift is to pay down the guilt and obligation debt. There are people that mean almost nothing to you, that you haven't seen much during the year and would, in some cases, be hard pressed to pick out of a line-up but you have to buy them something at Christmas. No-one is really sure why. I think it's one of things that is expected by society. In this case, though, I think if we polled members of society individually, they would say they'd be just as happy to give the whole thing a miss so the mystery is, where is this pressure coming from?

It's not really a mystery though, is it? You know where it's coming from. This is "society" as presented by the media - MediSoc. MediSoc is the phenomenon that gives us "society expects women to be skinny" and "society judges us on how we dress" and "society looks down on ... whatever it is society disapproves of this month". We get our ideas of normal from the people around us but more from the impression we get from the media about what the people around us think is normal. This is the power of MediSoc.

And MediSoc is being paid for by camel retailers who need to get enough cash into the hump at Christmas to last them through the year. So the pressure to buy "debt reduction" gifts isn't going away any time soon.

As an insult: Ironically, it is quite possible to insult someone with a gift. Make it too small, too kitsch, too unimaginative or downright inappropriate and the message is one of disdain and humiliation. In fact, as a service to the buying public, we could introduce a scale - rather like the coffee strength indicator beans - for insulting gifts. The tag might read something like "Perfect for insulting someone" and be followed by a number of tongues sticking out making raspberry noises as an indication of just how insulting the gift is.

Maybe our gift tags could look something like this - with apologies for the artwork - I failed art at school.

Can you treat me properly, please?

I fear that there is something fundamental that we're leaving out of the training of our medical people.  They treat illnesses, as best they can ( I assume), but they don't treat people.

It starts with your first experience of production line medicine. Having made your appointment and turning up in the sure hope of a kindly figure in a tastefully decorated consulting room,  you are disappointed to be thrust - medicare number first - into the cold white hands of the machines.  The flashing one,  the one that crushes your arm,  the one that blows onto your eyes and the famous machine that goes 'ping'! The only actual human contact happens between the computer operator and the machine. Gentle healing hands - brought to you by Microsoft.

Then the waiting room.  Set up by women,  I'm sure.  Men would know better.  You hang on until there's at least a one person gap between you and the bloke next to you; you don't say to someone "Take a seat in the waiting room" when the only available chair is wedged between the snoring octogenarian and the lady who looks threateningly jovial and likely to want to talk to you about either or both of her gall stones and her grandchildren.  You can bet she doesn't even know that the phone in my hand is a body-language shield against all human interaction.  These are medical services.  We're here because we're sick.  Hasn't anyone told you that illness spreads through proximity to others?  A respectful distance between patients please. 

While we're on seats,  could someone please tell me the name of the designer of waiting room furniture?  There's real genius there.  It must take inspiration, perspiration and an endless attention to the art of frustration to design furniture that is uncomfortable for everyone - regardless of height,  size, weight or buttock radius.  The industry award winner must be the ED designer. There are people bleeding to death in shocking discomfort because,  no matter how much agony they put themselves through moving around to get comfortable,  it will be futile; there will always be an awkward curve or protruding plastic nodule that wedges itself somewhere personal.

And I'm sick,  not stupid.  There's no need to speak to me like an imbecile - that's you not me,  by the way.  A clear, simple explanation of what you want me to do and why will suffice; I don't need a jolly happy little voice, cajoling me into having my medicine. You don't need to end your sentences with "for me" (as in "Just open your mouth for me") nor do you need to use a tone of voice that implies a sticker and a lollipop for good boys who cooperate. At my age, good boys who cooperate want something a good deal more than that but, as that seems not to be an option, a mature, adult request will do just fine, thank you.

Finally, I can accept uncertainty. I've long since joined Nietzsche - I'm beyond good and evil, right and wrong, well and sick. I know that there are shades, some of them deadly, in between and I know that you can't cure or even diagnose everything in a fifteen minute consultation. It's OK to tell me that you don't know or that you can't tell at this stage. Go right ahead and give me the full range of possibilities. I'm sure the worst you're going to tell me is nothing like the worst I've thought about at 2am when my mind is wandering, like the bimbo in the horror movies, refusing to turn the lights on and realising too late that what it thought was just a tree branch is, in fact, a nightmare from the depths of the scriptwriter's imagination. Just tell me the truth - I'm already haunted by Freddy.

And the bloody machine that goes 'ping'!

What Jane Austen didn't know

Disclaimer: I am a married man and this is not a blog airing dirty laundry - just what I hope is a humorous satire on a general theme. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. It is a truth further acknowledged that a married man, perforce in possession of a wife, must be in want of more sex than he is, in fact, getting.

``In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I long for a renewal of our conjugal unions."

And, like Fitzwilliam Darcy, he will be rejected with scorn and derision.

Let's not pursue this literary analogy too far, otherwise we'll find Darcy and Bingley getting it on in a foursome with the two Bennet sisters at the end of the novel and that is certainly NOT going to get made by the BBC. Although ... Jennifer Ehles, Susannah Harker - Jemima Rooper, Morven Christie .... stop it! This is supposed to be a blog, not a turgid turbid stream of consciousness. Get a grip man!

What Jane Austen didn't know - or did know perfectly well, just didn't write about it all that much - is that many marriages are blighted by the natural incompatibility between the libido of the man (unaffected by anything except death) and the libido of the woman (which disappears the moment she's had her kids). It is a cliche well worn with repeated usage.

There does not appear to be an immediate solution to this problem. Sending one's wife a spreadsheet of all the times she's rejected his wiles and the excuses she gave on each occasion is probably not a great way to resolve the incompatibility - this actually happened by the way. She might be tempted to respond with an annual performance appraisal of such poor quality - including a very small number of times at which she's reached the A grade - that he's probably not going to get a rise any time in the foreseeable future. These are not the bases of sound negotiations.

To bring the discussion more up to date, there have been a number of recent internet memes suggesting that a woman's mind is not unlike an internet browser of your choice with 2,573 tabs open all at once. A man's mind, by contrast, has but two tabs open - one for the thing they're actually doing and the other with pictures of naked women on it. This means that there's a 1 in 2 chance of a man being ready for action immediately (and a 100% chance of it taking only 30 seconds to close the other tab) but a 1 in 2,573 chance of a woman being so focused. This brings us into the world of probability and professional gambling - people who know all about odds.

As is customary in these blogs, here's a non sequitur: Is it the same for gay men? Heterosexual men - to a man- will admit to being interested in, or but one small step from being interested in, sex all the time. Is it the same for gay men? If so, it's a wonder they ever get out of the house.

Anyway, back to trackside and the bookies. How do you shorten odds like 2573 to 1?

Well, doping is the obvious choice. Alcohol has been tried for centuries. There's the semi-mythical Spanish Fly. It was suggested at some point that porn for women involved men voluntarily doing housework. The men I've surveyed have emphatically debunked that fairy tale.

Another option might be to reduce the weight - take away some of the handicap by closing some of those browser windows for her. Take care of the washing. Pick up the kids from school. Sort out their homework and their notes. Getting closer? Not on your life! Did you ever see that clip from Fantasia in which Mickey Mouse is trying to get rid of the brooms he's magically created by chopping them up only to find the bits spawning new brooms behind him? It's like that. Close one tab and three more will pop up in it's place.

Competition often brings out the best in us. A little more talent on the track might shorten the odds to a wonderful degree. Or, it will lead to the competitor being kicked to death in the stables and the jockey being firmly and painfully thrown to the ground in the mounting yard.

Honestly, if I knew the answer to this conundrum, I'd not only be making good money at the track but I'd be selling the ultimate self-help book as well.

Or maybe my analogy is flawed.

Or maybe I'm just flogging .... a dead horse.

The PAPA awards

Excitement is high here in Sydney tonight as we get ready for the 2014 PAPA awards.  We should be seeing the first of the red carpet arrivals very soon and, Bob,  what sort of night can we expect?

Joanne,  it's going to be a night of forced smiles,  gritted teeth and false bonhomie as these parents gather.  In reality they can barely tolerate the sight of each other but, as always in public, they'll have to put a well prepared, over made up face on it.

Bob, tell the viewers a bit about these awards.

The Parenting As Performance Art awards, Joanne, started ten years ago as a way to indulge that fundamental human instinct to prove oneself superior to others and justify one's haughty and dismissive attitude towards people who are just, well, inferior - in every way. They celebrate parenting that is excellent,  exemplary and most likely to produce - in the practitioner's eyes - children who are sure to inherit their parent's self appointed social status, snobby exclusivity and hubris so intense it's worn like a "Kick me here" sign somewhere between the waist and the knees.

And what will the competition be like, Bob?

Joanne,  as always,  it will be fiercely contested. Battled out with superficial smiles and cuttingly kind words, with all actions justified by appeal to higher goods such as childhood nutrition, helping out the school, reducing a carbon footprint or providing funds to support sufficiently grateful and not too smelly poor people.

One of the most tightly fought contests tonight will be Best Birthday Party.  Helen Jervis, who is just arriving now with her son Keiran - dressed in a tailor-made three piece suit to show of his mum's wealth - thought she had this category sewn up this year with her jumping castle, clown, and hotdogs made with crusty French bread and gourmet chippolata sausages.  Smug in her assumed victory,  she was reportedly apoplectic a week later when Evie Crane came storming in with tethered balloon rides, a sashimi chef and iTunes vouchers in the party bags at her daughter Meladee's 7th birthday celebration.

Yes Bob,  I think the police have insisted they don't arrive together tonight for fear Helen may breach her restraining order.

The category of Most Hobbies is a packed field this year.  Kole Tregearther is favorite though, with each of his kids learning three musical instruments,  two languages,  helping out at three charities and getting at least two photos in the school newsletter each week.  He'll be hard to beat and doesn't he know it! Arriving slightly late as always,  Kole is hardly out of the limo before he's boasting to the assembled media pack how much his kids have done today and letting reporters know what a self-sacrificing git he is driving them from one to the other all day - feeding them healthful snacks on the way.

Unnecessary School Charity Event is the other one to watch this evening.  It's a difficult field to get noticed in these days and the nominees are all unjustifiably prideful of what they've done.

Yes Bob,  getting parents to come out in support of yet another good cause is hard these days.  Schools everywhere have started clamping down on the exponential growth of coloured clothes days,  mini fetes, walks, runs, bake sales, discos and rocket launches run by do-gooder parents. These people are desperate to be the object of their enemies' envy by being known as the most painfully moral wrecker of Friday nights - yet another bloody school event on a Friday night - in the country.  In some parts of Australia,  the total charitable contribution that parents are being asked for exceeds the school fees by two or three times - and that is at some of the most pretentiously expensive private schools you can find.

Indeed Joanne. The big one of course is the ultimate prize; going home with the coveted "Just Better Than You" trophy. The judges will be looking for performance across the board in this category. Winners will need to show their skills in:

• Using a shared parenting moment about childhood discipline problems to make the other parent feel inadequate because "Our Genevieve doesn't do anything like that";
• Eloquent "children of good parents like me don't do that sort of thing" disdainful look used when someone else's child spills chocolate milk or bashes another child with his pirate sword;
• Endless one-upmanship in conversation whereby no-one else's child can have an accomplishment better than my child; and
• Consistently over-dressed for minor school events like fetes, parent-teacher nights and helping with the reading.

It's a tough category but there are many fine Australian parents who would qualify and we look forward to seeing tonight's winner.

The art of queuing

Has anyone mastered the art of queuing?  Having lived in regional Australia for the last 6 years or so, I have developed a sense that more than 5 people in a line is tantamount to an unlawful gathering with probable intent to overthrow the government.

Now I find myself in a city airport with 50 odd people in a queue in front of me and I've discovered that I don't have the psychological toolkit to handle the emotional experience.

It doesn't help that I don't like crowds and noise.  It's an assault on the senses. I feel like a voodoo doll being constantly stabbed. It's not unlike acupuncture but without the sense of engagement with ancient wisdom and corresponding placebo effect cure of my first world problems.

So I've come up with Young's Taxonomy - the seven emotional stages of queuing.

Despair: when you first see the line,  your heart will sink as you face the certainty of wasted life minutes.  Who knows,  you could be hit by a bus tomorrow and this half hour was one of the last precious few you had on this Earth. And, as your life flashes before your eyes and the tunnel of light beckons,  one of your lingering images will be of the kid swinging from the red rope and knocking over the silver pole things.

Anger: Why don't they have more staff on?  Why wasn't that person at the head of the queue ready when they mumbled "next please" from nine desks up the line?  You will accelerate from the depths of misery in stage one straight up through to borderline apoplexy as your heart races and your face dons its fiercest and most disapproving expression.  You will mutter complaints to your spouse,  just too loud to be sotto voce but not loud enough for your iredol to take legitimate offence and take you to task for your rudeness.

Anxiety: Brought on by other people's anger phase,  you will now start to worry that your movement up the line will be too slow,  you won't have the right documents ready or that you'll be in the wrong line altogether and will be sent in disgrace down to the end counter which you should have noticed had a business card sized sign for people who need to check in a guitar  It's quite normal at this stage to pat your pockets three times a minute,  read and reread your ticket, jerk spasmodically at every tiny movement of the person in front and glance around nervously at every barely heard utterance of frustration from people behind you.

Tedium: You can't talk to your spouse because the anger phase has set up a "moment" between you that will have to be sorted out later.  You can't read this excellent blog because you can't risk not being ready to move forward another car length at a moment's notice.  You've taken in all the information you can from the advertising and safety information signs and,  Sherlock-like, you could confidently inform Watson of the number of silver poles between you and the start of the queue, and the number of baubles in the Christmas wreaths overhead.  You now have nothing to do.

Time dilation: The passage of time will slow down for you as you near the front of the queue. Studies are currently underway to determine if this is due to the proximity of a large mass of frustration - relativity at work - or just our impatience to be done with this horrible experience dilating our perceptions. Don't feel alarmed at this point if, when you look at the person being served at the counter, you see their lips move lethargically and hear their voice sounding a bit drunk as the slow motion replay sponsor's logo appears in the bottom right hand side of your vision. To everyone else it will seem like you waited for 45 seconds to a minute at the front of the queue but to you, 23 years will have passed.

Disbelief: Now it's finally your turn and you're glancing up and down the serving counters, trying to estimate who will be finished first so you're ready on the clutch when the light turns green. And, with increasing incredulity, you notice that every single customer in front of you has brought six bags with them - each weighing something in excess of 60kg. If basic general knowledge about air travel had not caused them pause for thought, the endless repetitions of baggage limits on tickets, websites, signage and travel agent advice should have done the trick. But no, they are now standing there, arguing with the plastic smile behind the counter that they couldn't possibly travel with any less, have special dietary requirements that meant the packing of a whole cow, are arriving from overseas where baggage restrictions don't apply, were forced into it by the rising cost of airfares (there are kids set up with iPods and softdrinks in at least two of the suitcases) or some other bizarre justification. All with a look of pained injustice on their face. And the plastic smile, whose job it is to make sure that the plane not only gets off the ground but stays that way until the pilot deems otherwise, is just saying no. Now it really might be 23 years.

Resolution and superiority: Now you're done and through. Bag checked in, boarding pass in hand and you can walk along the winner's side of the red rope, posing for the paparazzi, signing autographs and appearing in selfies with envious teenagers who are stuck with their parents back at the anger phase. Walk with your head high, you heart full and your ego inflated - until you realise that you're back to square one because the queue for security checking started sometime last Tuesday.

Sound and Fury is published on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Please share with your friends. 

The little black dictionary

I have, at various points, honoured the work of one of the great wordsmiths - Douglas Adams. Today I will continue to do so by adding more to his wonderful dictionary "The Meaning of Liff"; the basic premise of which was to take place names and to given them meanings for experiences we all have but for which there are no words.

Today, it's for the parents. A little black dictionary for those experiences you don't even want to admit to yourself that you have.

My apologies to the good people of Norwich and Norfolk.

Spixworth (n) - the thirty five cents or so of change which is all you're going to get from a fifty when you take the family to dinner at Maccas because you just can't be bothered cooking tonight.

Hellesdon (n) - the infernal experience of having to cope with the kids when you've got a force 10 flu going on and you'd really rather they all went to Hell so you could crawl back into bed and feel sorry for yourself.

Little Melton (n)- a polite way to describe the kid whose behaviour is a sure sign of future jail time and whose father is clearly where he got it from but with whom your child insists on maintaining a friendship, despite your ongoing efforts to:

• separate them,
• have the child expelled from the school or, at a pinch, 
• abducted by aliens.

Costessey (n) - the money you begrudge your kids occasionally because you'd rather spend it on a dirty weekend away than on the $120 rowing outfit they need and the $400 matching tracksuit, hat and gear bag.

Elsing (v) - just straight lying to your kids to get them off your back for ten minutes.

Barnham Broom (n) - the piece of cleaning equipment that you feel like wrapping around their heads because your children haven't managed to pick up the three bits of Lego, damp towel and orphaned school shoe that you've only asked them to tidy away twenty times in the last half hour.

Blofield (n)- those 16 square grid things that what passes for homework these days is laid out in and you know is going to be the bane of your existence for the next fortnight. Although three of the items are meditate, play a game with your family and exercise (which you can tick off on night one), the others are monsters. In reality, they are so difficult that you are going to have to do the work yourself, with just enough input from the kid to make you feel OK about it.

Stoke Holy Cross (expletive) - the only phrase you can come out with at 9pm when they are still fighting and won't go to sleep and you know you're not allowed to scream 'Go to sleep, you little shits!"

Surlingham (adj) - descriptive of the bedroom of a teenage daughter whose life is falling apart due to the injustice imposed by asking her to help with the washing up. There are probably rude little notes on the door, too.

Horning (v)- trying to get the kids into bed and asleep early.

Horsey Windpump (n) - the person who doesn't actually have young kids but feels the need to pass snide remarks about what good parenting is or to make comments like "Well my parents would never have put up with that".

Langley v Chedgrave - the important piece of case  law that allowed the defence of "having young children" to be advanced in cases of murder of Horsey Windpumps.

Saxlingham Nethergate (n) - the made up excuse you find for not attending your kids' school assembly or liturgy when, in reality, you just can't bear another minute of listening to the aural offences committed by the school band or the patronising, nasal voice of the principal.

It's beginning to look a lot like .....

Oh bloody hell, it's started again! The dreadful office tree is up, the shopping centres are bedecked with plastic holly and large gold objects of a shape which has no formal geometric name but looks uncomfortably like a butt-plug, greetings carefully constructed to avoid religious references abound and I have been press-ganged into the office party and Secret Santa (so named because no-one knows how to spell or pronounce Christkindl - it always comes out sounding like some kind of chip).

Christmas. If I had a residual sense of universal justice I would ask "What have I done to deserve this?" but, as I am now soundly convinced of the inherent randomness of the universe, I am putting the whole thing down to a meme that has mutated and gone cancerous.

The early signs of the disease started back in September with the emergence, in a hidden corner of the supermarket, of cards and gifts for one's loved ones overseas. A visit to the GP at that point would have been wise as he could have spotted the growth for what it was and excised it with a painless little procedure in his offices and sent it away for testing to detect any signs of malignant festivity.

Hindsight is a fine thing but, we are forced to admit, we ignored these early eruptions of fake snow and ploughed on regardless, distracted as we were by the quotidian concerns of work, family and fun.

Then, in mid November, the red started to spread from it's little corner and slowly pervaded more and more shelf space. H G Wells' Martian red weed has nothing on the Santa / holly / blood-like tones that crept like a threatening crimson shadow down the supermarket aisles, engulfing unwary products in its path.

At this point, had we been wise, a strong dose of radiation or some chemotherapy might have knocked the beard off the Santa and left him exposed for what he is; a strange, obsessive, fictional stalker with a long record of break and enter and a judgemental personality. But, again, we missed our opportunity.

For experts managing pandemics, the great fear is that the contagion will become airborne and its spread will be uncontainable. And that is exactly what happened in the last week of November. Infected by contact with badly drawn nativity scenes on cards or packets of discount mince pies, store staff made the fatal mistake of switching on the Christmas music. Medical authorities cried into their beers from sheer despair as George Michael, John Lennon, Bing Crosby and other opportunistic disease vectors spread the infection far and wide.

And now it's too late. Christmas has leaped from person to person. Increasingly serious cases are turning up at emergency departments every day having grown red hats, antlers and desperately jolly flashing earrings in consequence of having caught the disease. Mental health experts are overwhelmed by the number of adults regressing to childhood, pretending to be elves, sitting on the knee of the office creep who volunteered - yet again - to dress up the red suit this year and walking around ringing tiny little tinkly bells.

Houses and public buildings have become cesspools, spreading the illness to innocent passers-by through garish flashing lights, inflatable characters doing unlikely things on the roof and fake snow melting off the windows in the 35 degree heat and running in rivulets across the footpath.

There is now nothing for it; we are beyond cure. The whole country is going to be put into palliative care until the New Year after which, it is to be hoped, we will have found some kind of vaccine.

Then the wind changed

"Be careful. The wind might change and you'll get stuck like that!"

Some might say it's an old wives' tale but, looking around I have to disagree; if you keep your face that way and the wind changes, you'll be stuck like that forever. Sit at a cafe and look at the faces of people going by- you'll see what I mean:

The Eaglehawk: like the Muppets character, this lady looks at you from on high , down the length of her nose. And what a nose! Even if it's not actually a beak, it gives off a definite sense of beakiness, a beak- aura, if you will . There's an implied pair of half-glasses there too and, whatever it is, you know she disapproves of it

The White Rabbit: crafted by many years of dragging unwilling children through uninteresting shops - with no time to say hello, goodbye - this face retains its air of put upon panic well into middle age (>60) and beyond. The reason for the frazzle has gone but the face of the frazzle has stayed. Stop and chat to this face at your peril.

The Charlotte Bartlett: Made famous by Maggie Smith's portrayal of the eponymous character in "Room With a View" (oh Helena, how my teenage heart longed for you) this visage is characterised by resigned, long suffering disappointment with just a pinch of unappreciated self-denial for flavour. There is a slight pursing of the lips that happens every so often, like a nervous tic. It doesn't, generally,seem to be related to any apparent cause for disapproval but small children, public laughter, unsuitable shirts in shop windows or a slight change in the relative humidity - all crosses to be borne - will trigger the tic and implied sigh of resignation.

The Bambi: The dead give away that someone was dazzled by the headlights of oncoming life when the wind changed is the slightly open mouth.  It is usually matched with the gentle frown and general air of being thirty seconds or so behind unfolding events. It is a face that will probably have to blink once or twice when spoken to in order to bring it's owner's focus into the here and now.

The Winston-ish Churchill: This is a face almost solely seen on men.  It's a look they've been building to all their lives.  There is a slight tightening of the mouth,  a disdainful look in the eyes and a definite feeling that the next sentence will start with "Well, young man,  in my day ...". It is a face of assumed but unearned superiority.

The Billy Connolly: This is the face I want when the breeze backs into the West for me.  It's a face that has seen the joke. There is the merest hint of a smile at the corners of the mouth,  a gentle gleam in the eyes and a tendency to look at you sideways and grin when someone is griping their latest gripe.  This face is welcome anywhere and a real relief,  particularly to the young,  because they know that they'll walk away feeling better about themselves and their lives. I want to have this face.