Ed is in Chicago

For a while now, I have been wondering why the telephone of the Jolly Old Soul who works in the room next door rings to the tune of ‘Jingle bells’. Up until now I have presumed that it was an Muslim Afghan, unschooled in Christian festivals, understandably mistaking the seasonal connotations of the ring. Now though, I am not so sure. I had a revelatory moment the other day, considering his enourmous fagyellowed moustache, his ruddy cheeks, his paunch and his toothy grin (oh…how toothy!), his constant laugh-wrinkles and his wheezing laugh. The resemblance hit me. Is the jingle coincidental? Surely it can’t be. I suddenly understood that the Fagyellowed Toothy Jolly Soul betrays an unmissable likeness to our very own pagan Santa. It is unmistakable. OK, it might be a strangely mutated likeness – but in someways that makes it more convincing. Like those theories that the Loch Ness Monster is actually a giant porpoise or a sea baboon, or some such. You imagine that if someone did catch a glimpse of Santa – flying through the air, or crawling though chimneys, he probably would get dressed up a bit in the imagination, and grow.

Knowing the reputation of the Jolly Old Soul in question, the mandate of the yulish jolly bepaunched one has to be modified also – not a jolly philanthropist who travels around in a sleigh sending presents down chimney’s for children to discover, ho-ho-ho-ing all the way, but rather a jolly philanthropist who travels around in a Land Rover, finding incidentally that people have thoughtfully left presents for him, cackling and wheezing to himself all the way.