Somewhere there is a book about Christmas Crackers…the tradition, its origins, its future and…dread the thought…Cracker Humour. But I refuse to waste time googling to find the definitive text.

One thing to be said for this year’s offerings is that they are cheap. Rigged exchange rates and the peculiar need of the Chinese Communist Government to imprison their populations for eighteen hours a day to make junk for the Overdeveloped World are a big part of it. No doubt the Grand Asian Masterplan has African Colonial Possessions doing this two decades hence.

Apart from ranting there is little I can do about the several versions of the New World Orders planned for us. There is an American one that forgot to take account of the Asian one and the Moslem one…whose vision is as much economic as religious with monetary independence from Wall Street’s Neo-Judaic Banking Cartels as a central aim. But this is not the stuff of Christmas.

Let me instead do my bit to improve the quality of Christmas Crackers. At the end of this blog you will find a few Subversive Sayings for you to produce when Aunty Doris asks you what your cracker says. Says? No doubt Talking Crackers are not far away. In fact I may have inadvertently started the trend.

I broke with the 100-year old tradition of posting Christmas Cards four years ago. Connie and I had been in the Christmas Card Business between 1997 and 2001…with the Printing Department of Neame Designs at 13A Tower Street in Rye as our partner in the small firm of Ryeproduction.

But it seemed a little inappropriate to continue without her. So for the past four years I have sent e-cards to my digitalised contacts. The joy of these is that you can choose the day of delivery and get positive acknowledgement that your greeting has been collected.

My three internet errands in Hastings on Friday had been to send some web files to Kentucky, to get up to date on e-mails and to send out my Christmas Greeting Cards…Christmas Eve for Sweden and Christmas Day for everyone else. I should have reversed the order because my inbox included a Christmas Greeting from my PCHut Buddy Sandra Scott that creased me up. So I just had to send it to my Christmas List.

It took a while because…apart from running an animation sequence using Macromedia’s Flash technology…this American Greetings Company Card also allowed me to personalise the card by choosing from a long list of names. Father Christmas then inserted the Spoken Name into his address. ‘Hello Sandra! Have you been good this year?’ Just wonderful.

It cost a $13.99 annual subscription as I had to sign up for a 30-day trial. I can cancel but won’t because ten-pence a card…and falling…is Fair Trade by anybody’s standard. Perhaps next year I will be able to get Santa Claus to include more than one name in his Christmas Address. I wanted ‘Hello Chris and Mary !’ but couldn’t have it.

Email Inboxes can be exciting places…once the junk mail has been unceremoniously dumped into some new circle of Dante’s Hell that not even Hieronymus Bosch could imagine. Today was no exception for my inbox contained a lengthy tome from an American Gentleman who in his official capacity goes by the name of Lawrence F. Schiller, Counsel for Sue, Grabbit & Runne of Farmington Hills in Michigan.

Counsel Schiller stunned me with the news that he had in his possession some letters from 40 years ago…and had of late taken to perusing them. Let Attorney Schiller take up the tale. ‘I first mention you when I discuss your proposed trip to Canada/US, and later indicate that you were at a party/dance at the London's English Speaking Union building in mid-December…just before I went on holiday to the continent and not long before your accident.'

'I then note that I visited you at the hospital in mid-January 1965…I'd just returned from holiday a few days before Christ’s Hospital started back up…and I went to see Mike Brockbank who gave me the news. I visited you the next day.’

‘My comments in my letters home very clearly show the immediate and rather significant impact your accident had on me. Sometime that spring…after our next school holiday I believe…you unexpectedly showed up to visit me in Thornton A while you visited others at Christ’s Hospital. By that time Mike already was in Canada in your stead.'

'I even mention somewhere along the line…as I mightily struggled to learn how to hit a cricket ball…that you were CH's leading batsman in spring 1964..before my arrival…and that you would have been captain had you stayed until spring 1965 year. True?’ See what I mean about inboxes. Now for your Cracker Sayings…and, yes Larry, ‘tis true.

Love is blind but marriage is the real eye-opener;
Real women don’t have hot flushes they have power surges;
If at first you don’t succeed try it the wife’s way;
We child-proofed our house but they’re still getting in;
Both of us can’t look good…it’s either me or the house;
Women who seek equality with men should have higher standards;
My husband needs glasses…he doesn’t see things my way;
Every time I find Mr Right my husband scares him off;
Some days are a total waste of make-up; Bed &
Breakfast…two things men can’t make;
We take our kids everywhere but they keep finding their way back; Middle age is when a broad mind and a narrow waist swap places.
Boom! Boom!