Always having previously gone to the Test in either Melbourne or Headingley (think I once went to the WACA for a one day, never the Gabba, Lords nor The Oval) … I did see something about snipers on the roof of the cricket …

… maybe it was being fixated with Christmastide, maybe with so many being fixated on snowy landscapes (wishful thinking before New Year here, even on the NE coast) … well my mind was not on the cricket until I saw this:

Oh my goodness … Boxing Day Test at the Gee! I would have been there for sure, living a half mile away in Richmond. Then I took a second look … what’s this 2026 thing? Shirley it goes Boxing, Sat, Sun, rest day Monday, then Tue, Wed. Yikes … I’ve completely forgotten, must look it up.

Considering that this post was going to be about the sidebar pic, one of Irina’s. Thing was … in Russia, we never needed to fantasise about snow … coming up to New Year, it was always there, soft new snow on top of the hardpacked as we walked to the state opera house across the square, snow in the air. And on the weekend, short drive from town … long, snowy lane for walks and shaslik in the clearing. Toboggan too.

Fantasyland? Together with the army of females dressed in fur, with hoods … yes indeed. But these three days now have also been divine, talking to so many up and down the land, in the Antipodes, in North America, Greece, France, Russia too.

It’s a bizarre situation, it messes with the head … I’d love to go all Little Englander but just can’t these five days … every time I try, one of the friends from another land writes. We’re forced into our own sort of “good” globalism. Fight them? Would I heck as like, even were they lefty.

However, should they attack, alongside the infidel invader, seriously attack … well of course I’d have to go after them alongside our patriots. But I’m having enormous trouble these three days having anything but a lovely time, filled with food and liquid, wanting to snooze every few hours.

Not sure how you’re placed where you are.

…..

(1332) Hmmmmm, no rest day, started Christmas Day … appalling. Seems the pitch was doing too much with the ball, suppresses the strokemaking. As a former medium-fast (lower district level), obviously I favour the ball, esp. for spin but there’s such a thing as way too much. I once bowled on a shocker of a pitch and there was no skill involved … it was near unplayable. (1336)

 

… on the Second Day of Christmas:

First up is the hammered dulcimer. As one wag noted … if that’s the hammered, how good will the sober dulcimer sound?

Next is our Steve’s offering … Once in Royal David’s City” | The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge:

And the one I dropped from the main list to accommodate IYE’s:

Was going to run Chuckles’s version of Jingle Bells, just to annoy Dearieme but thought … why not annoy him with this instead:

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is about it in the carol department for 2025. Eyes now set on New Year’s Eve.

 

… otherwise known as St Stephen’s Day, otherwise known as the Second Day of Christmas (there being Twelve Days altogether)… otherwise known as Boxing Day. Originally a day of giving, it’s now just a commercial buying and selling day.

However, there is but one carol for this day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_King_Wenceslas

 

(0836) In bed, soon came good, ready to roll again.

 

10. Addressing the (hopefully) inanimate

9. Now this one

Imagine they arrived en masse and the local council urged us to take two or three in for diversity’s sake.

8. There was a X clip of a child running to escape a paedo

… seemed farfetched but point was, she ran to the nearest woman, mother or not … looking after kids, animals, women, seems part of our operating system in the west, not with monsters from other cultures.

I’m also thinking … if you were out driving and saw this below, would you not stop and buy at least something?

7. Let’s keep our eye on these bstds

6. Steve with a question

… whoever heard of a skinny Santa?

(0526) Greetings all, this Boxing Day. (0613)

(0723) Heading back to bed for some time, not 100%, need to hit it on the head. (0824)

 

5. Ron speaks

4. Steve at 1243

• Judge Finally Allows Access to Fulton County 2020 Physical Ballots and Related Documents
• Impossible Terms in Zelensky 20 Point Ukraine Peace Proposal
• CBP Commander Greg Bovino Savages Third-World Alien Rep. Ilhan Omar in Christmas Message
• Macron hits back at US sanctions. Bush-Putin docs reveal early NATO warning. Orban, EU war economy
• Conflict with all three great powers. Greenland back on the table
• More there.

3. There are certain names among pundits

… as has constantly been pointed out … who are high value, while others touting themselves with “shows” as megapundits are of “some” value in reality … my view on the latter is the same as my view on High Pointy-hatters and Incense Swingers in churches. My view on the former is that if they drop something, we need to drop ours and have a shoofty.

Patrick Byrne is an anomaly. Hardly respectful towards much of DJT’s doings, he’s still essentially onside with MAGA … former cyber badboy … weeeell, at least see what happens … he’s in with Emerald.

2. DAD at 1243

a) Considering the demographic and political trends in France and the UK that are “aligned with Islamism,” Vice President JD Vance expressed concern about the nuclear weapons possessed by these countries….

b) Macron pushes Germany to reintegrate Russian nuclear energy to EU system. In the coming weeks, German authorities are expected to decide whether to approve a controversial licence application by Framatome….

c) Elon Musk, on his social medium, mocks Air France for not daring to wish people “Merry Christmas”, unlike the Arab airline Emirates, which doesn’t hesitate to do so.

d) Von der Leyen cancels trip to Brazil to sign Mercosur deal after farmers descend on Brussels….

e) The EU dream is dying and nobody wants to admit it – cold, brutal mathematics that Brussels desperately hopes you’ll never understand.

1. Bit of an Op Ed

Still one day ahead in this three day festivity … was not expecting Christmas Eve to be so full-on and today is the easing out of the festivity. Verdict … pretty good, actually. In terms of present haul … ran out of space to put them, ditto with food in the fridge.

I compare that with Samantha Taghoy (now Smith), the rapee as one of the “groomed”. It was a sad letter she penned on X … all the people in her family she lost … and that then leads to the Veterans on the streets. Sorry to use that word in Britain as we called them returned servicemen and women but Veterans is more universal now between allies.

Toodles has sent another link I have to bury … IYE (bless him, hope he’s coming out of it) would be interested I’d think. Possibly at UHC under Toods’ name. Most interesting.

Still dark here, no real plan for the day, expecting one more visitor … one of the pressies (Oz vernacular?) was Italian milk bread with fruit … quite yummy with tea or coffee. Best start posting our chaps’s fayre plus my backlog … have a good Boxing Day … anything planned there?

(1608) Hoping your Crimbo lunch was all it promised.

 

11. Christmas message from our beloved leader

A Christmas message to friends and fellow patriots. pic.twitter.com/Oue6vGYrhL

— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) December 25, 2025

10. Wise man once said

9. Better for you too

8. Steve and war room

• Peter Kirby On His New Upcoming Book-‘Chemtrails Exposed: A New Manhattan Project’
• Jason Jones: It Is A Tragedy That These First-Century Christian Communities Have Been Facing Ethnic Cleansing And Genocide
• Father Issa: Christmas in Bethlehem Is Special. Here You Witness First-hand The Place Where Jesus Was Born. Back Then People Had The Same Problems As We Do Today, And The Message Is Still The Same!
• Father Issa: Your Earthly Status Does Not Matter In The Eyes Of God. Even The Little, Insignificant Town Of Bethlehem Is Now Known As The Birthplace Of The King

7. Which was the first Christian country?

6. The funn vee haf

5. Nice lunch too by the way

4. OoL admins are such fun people

 

“Sink me, a dammed good movie about the Reign of Terror and the dangerous efforts of an Englishman known as the Scarlet Pimpernel, aka Sir Percy Blakeney, aka Leslie Howard, and his small band of colleagues to rescue at least a few aristocrats from the French guillotine.

The film has three themes going at the same time: (1) Howard’s constant trips to France to smuggle out the aristos; (2) the measures taken by the French ambassador to England (Raymond Massey, the one with the ineradicable sneer) to discover the hidden identity of the Pimpernel; and (3) the fact that Howard’s wife is being blackmailed to pass that secret identity over to the French so they can capture him and lop off his head.

It’s an unpleasant situation altogether. The French aristocrats and their neglectful king were bad enough — though we hear only one guilty reference to some “mistakes” they made. But the Reign of Terror — covered also in Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” — was worse, if possible. They lopped off the heads of everyone associated with the French nobility, including men, their families, their children, some of the servants, any rebellious anti-rebels, and — well, just about anybody they wanted. One proud revolutionary, Condorcet, had to write a tract in support of the movement while hiding out himself from his fellow citizens under suspicion of harboring anti-revolutionary thoughts. 

At the head of the French citizens was the dictator manqué Robespierre. I think his head wound up under the guillotine as well. So may that of M. Guillotine, the proponent of the device. Actually, Guillotine’s neck remained intact but he must have worried about it when he was imprisoned. And what did the French revolution wind up with? Napoleon. Sometimes revolutions, or any social movements, can go too far.

The direction and photography are grand. Huge ballrooms crowded with fine ladies and gentlemen listening to Mozart. The score is by Arthur Benjamin, who also wrote “The Storm Cloud Sonata” for Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

A scene in which Leslie Howard, posing as a fop, appears to be sprawled asleep on a library chair while Raymond Massey (always dressed in dark garb as befits a villain) paces around waiting for the Pimpernel to stumble in. A scene in which Massey finally captures Howard in France and orders the firing squad to execute him, only to find out the squad belongs to Howard. 

And here you can tell the novel was written by a woman. The firing squad don’t kill Massey either. Under Howard’s orders they just dump him into a wet hole in the floor and cover it with a heavy barrel while they escape. If the writer had been a man, he would have concocted a magnificent duel using swords and furniture, with the two men exchanging insults, and Massey fighting dirty.

A final dramatic shot of Howard and his lovely wife, Merle Oberon, as they reach England and the key light fades from their smiling faces and they become silhouettes against a romantically fuzzy, yet still slightly ominous, backlight.

There’s more intrigue than action in the story, and it doesn’t carry with it Dickens’ genuine concern for realism, but it pumps up the tension and we are always rooting for the hero who must play the humiliating part of the fool in the interests of justice. How the Scarlet Pimpernel must have wanted to tear off that lace and fling away that monocle-on-a-stick and declare himself for what he was. We may call this “the Clark Kent Problem.”

Speaking of Howard’s being an English Baron and pretending to be a clothes-conscious fop — one step removed from fairyhood — I can’t bring myself to believe that the writers of “The Mark of Zorro” weren’t familiar with this tale.”

(1234) Afternoon all, Merry Christmas to those who might have missed it. ☺️ (1324)

 

3. Vox Day

HERE

“The only people who believe that America is an idea, and that it can belong to everyone, are the enemies of America. Long before Vivek Ramaswamy was even born, Moammar Qaddafi was saying the same thing: America belongs to everyone, America belongs to the world. More recently the Iranian president, or former Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said much the same thing. He said America is a concept that belongs to the world and no government has the right to tell people that they can’t go and live in the United States.”

2. DAD at 1242

a) A European Christmas Carol. The carols, the Nativity displays, the special services—all of it is a reminder of the Story that still has the power to transform….

b) France: now without a budget for the year ahead. In Paris, each and every government attempt to reach a budget agreement has failed miserably.

c) The Algerian Parliament unanimously adopted a law criminalizing French colonization and demanding “official apologies” and reparations….

d) The Senate has adopted a 5% “riot tax” on insurance contracts, similar to those levied for natural disasters and terrorism. This is the Senate’s Christmas gift to the French: a 5% premium on insurance policies to cover damage caused by urban riots and demonstrations that turn violent….

1. Steve at 1242

• Trump State Department Bars EU-Linked Globalists from Entry for Pushing Anti-Free Speech Censorship
• Spanish Right-wing Vox Party Surges in Regional Elections, as Crumbling Minority Coalition Led by Socialist PM Sánchez Is Mired in Corruption and Sexual Misconduct Scandals
• Rubio sanctions Europe elite. Zelensky demands Russia withdrawal. Redacted Epstein ‘co-conspirators’
• Russia Convicts 187 Foreign Mercenaries Fighting For Ukraine, Over 1,000 More Face Charges
• John Brennan Lawyers Confirm Their Client Is A Target Of A Grand Jury Investigation
• Merry Christmas to all; as we celebrate His birth, may you receive the blessings that only Jesus can give
• Even more.

1. If a number divided by 1 is itself, then what is a number divided by zero?
2. What are two things you can never eat for dinner?
3. What/how are the three parts of the written fraction designated? (N, V, D)
4. Who am I … I wear a mask and stop you getting home?
5. Sushi refers specifically to which part of the dish?
6. What was clothing name Gucci’s first name?
7. (Once in a philosophy exam) Is this a good question?

Take your time, chaps and chapesses. Answers as soon as a smartypants gets them or this evening.