Does it get us anywhere, all this hanging about in social media bubbles exchanging like-minded bitchy comments about Boris Johnson. A futile habit but one hard shake.
You tell yourself to go and do something useful instead, and then up he pops, hair all over the place, words all over the place, another reveal in the most crap advent calendar ever. Every single window has Johnson with his thumbs up or perhaps trying on a frown for size but ending up with a smirk.
Somewhere along life’s twisting path, Johnson adopted the moto If It Isn’t Smirking It Isn’t Working; never mind the occasion, a joke or silly metaphor is always hanging from his lips.
That man is addicted to foolish optimism. As a foolish optimist myself, I understand. But I’m just Mr Nobody sitting on a ledge while pontificating; he’s the prime minister, and he can’t keep making grand sweeping promises and then tearing them up.
This was all going to be over by Christmas, he told us in one of his lying Tigger moments. Just last week he was standing at the door, carolling us with Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, before shuffling off to annoy the people next door.
And then yesterday he did a reverse Santa and cancelled Christmas because a new coronavirus variant was “out of control”. This may well be a perfectly valid reason, although we’ve been spun so many varieties of the truth by now we don’t know what to believe.
It comes to something when you’re told of a lethal new variant of a potentially deadly virus, and all you can do is shrug and say but is he flourishing another whopper?
We needed a serious man for serious times, instead we got a grandstanding buffoon. Gordon Brown was on the radio earlier as we drove around delivering Christmas cards. He sounded sensible and prime ministerial – labels that never stick on Johnson.
Anyway, Christmas. The government should not have promised us that five-day holiday in the first place. Most people were resigned to a quiet one, then Johnson told everyone that Christmas was on again. He did that because he didn’t wish to be remembered as the Man Who Cancelled Christmas; and now he will be.
Yesterday’s announcement about the five days becoming one, and London and the south-east going into lockdown, had a consequence all to easy to have predicted: half of the capital rushed to the station, jostled in long queues, and crammed onto trains with no hope of social distancing.
It was almost a perfect plan, if you were an opportunistic virus looking to hitch a lift north.
According to the front page of the Sunday Times today, “Christmas is cancelled by surging mutant virus” – a headline positioned above a picture of Boris Johnson. This led to lots of amusement in those social media bubbles. Yes, he’s a useless posh scruff but it’s a bit mean to call him a mutant virus.
The only message this battered optimist can offer is to have the best Christmas you can muster, with loved ones or without; with plum pudding (a big yes from me) or without.
I saw an optimistic bus in York yesterday. On the front it bore a message about how 2021 will be better.
Maybe that bus is more trustworthy than the prime minister.
Merry Christmas everyone.