Saturday 26th December 2020

You’ll have noticed that my usual Christmas Day broadcast did not this year take place – along the lines of Monaco National Year which, as I’ve mentioned before, in the year of Grace Monaco’s Death was subject to the saddest announcement that ever was placed in The Times of London. It said, ‘Monaco National Day. Monaco National Day, usually held on October 23rd, will not this year take place.’

With the Gay Grandfather I often went in the Rover (one of those ones with the front and back doors opening from the mid point, the whole machine black, of course, for an official air) to take bottles of port to the tenants. They would say things like, ‘That’ll be very nice with a bit of hot water.’ We did get out of the Rover, we even advanced up their garden paths but we never went in. That was the thing. It would have been unthinkable for the landlord to cross the threshold unless somebody needed to be sectioned. The tradition carried on into the 21st century, even with those who were not tenants, but might have been.  My Christmas visit to Mrs Dinner, the Gay Mother’s thrice-weekly until 1986, was always her leaning out of her stable-type door, me in the road outside. That would have been going on until at least 2010.

Now we’re all tenants. No home to be entered. Go no further than the doorstep. Beyond might be a hovel, not fit to be seen. And seething, of course, with you-know-what.

In other news, Poor Little Rich Gay male parts are giving out at an alarming rate. The Laird was restricted earlier in the year and unable to function. Now Beamish O’Halloran, of the Red Tops, was struck on Christmas Eve with the same thing. Off to Causality. Laura Malcolm is looking forward to all her male members being attached to catheters next summer in Normandy, which would be a good revenge for all the trouble they’ve caused womenfolk over the years.

Her Majesty the Queen had absolutely the right idea yesterday in her broadcast. Don’t mention it. Not by name, only oblique. ‘She’s gawn Woke,’ Laura Malcolm said. But that’s another matter. I liked the idea of her peering out from Windsor at the lights of Diwali in Slough. What she also didn’t mention is that those people would probably not have four or five huge drawing rooms in different colours – as she does.