Raisa came back on Tuesday which completed the picture. You could say we’re ready for C-day. 

We humans need a little reassurance from time to time. Life’s hard enough as it is. At best, it’s a gamble with terrible odds: no one gets out alive. And, just when you think it’s safe to get back on the road and you’re finally on the right track, wham, you’re hit by a truck. 

But there’s hope. The Good Lord never gives you more than you can handle and, occasionally, He throws in a sweetener. 

This is it. 

It’s that season of the year, the time you feel optimistic, even hopeful, for no reason at all. OK, I lied: there’s basis. It’s the most wonderful time for a beer. 

The origins of this particular belief is grounded in basic Newtonian logic. There’s a day coming and it engenders a particular response ergo we have Claus and Effect. 

It has that  effect on people. We went to Pavilion in downtown Kay-El the other day and those guys can put on a show. 

You entered an extravaganza of excess, of Christmastide run amuck. Gaily decorated Christmas trees were ascending the stairs while crystal ropes reflecting a thousand points of light streamed down from the ceiling. 

Draped in electric candles, baubles and crepe, the scene was a riot in silver and gold and red and green. A mistle-toast to the holiday season. Yule be in my heart and then some.

It was so over the top, I found myself grinning.  People were taking selfies against the backdrop and there were pop-up shops doing a brisk trade. 

OK, it’s crass commercialism of the highest order but, boy, does it know how to put on wings! The shops are decked out in ruby red and evergreen hues which gives it warmth and makes it inviting.   

I didn’t know much about Christmas until I met Rebecca in university 48 years ago. 

What I realised immediately was that the whole thing – the season, its essence– gave her great joy.

Very much later, I saw the same joy in my daughter’s eyes when she woke up on Christmas mornings. It was quite a sight to behold and enough to make your heart swell. 

I only converted to Catholicism 29 years after marriage but have participated enthusiastically in all Christmases since we tied the knot. 

It isn’t unusual: I know many non-Christian families who put up trees and give and receive presents among themselves. That’s the Christmas spirit right there. 

As they say during Christmas dinners: “It’s your presents that’s important.” 

OK, that was a joke but you don’t have to be Christian to grasp that Christmas is an occasion where love and family are at its centerpiece.  Or as Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts put it, “It’s not what’s under the Christmas tree that matters, it’s who’s around it.” 

At its core, it’s a state of mind: of peace and goodwill to all and to see the best in everyone. 

And then the season will weave its magic spell over the world and cast everything in a softer and more beautiful light.

Merry Christmas everyone. 

ENDS

When he was 24, Paul Simon wrote Old Friends, a hauntingly beautiful song, a line of which went: how terribly strange to be 70. 

When you’re so young, seventy is a light-year away. Simon’s 84: it must be surreal listening to the song now. 

Age brings perspective. 

I think looking 60 is great – only because I’m rubbing shoulders with 70.

I’m just thankful I only have to grow old once: I don’t think I could do it twice.

The problem with the process is that it’s been sanitised to make it more palatable, as if ironing out its wrinkles would magically make the slow disintegration of body and, sometimes, mind wholesome and natural. 

It’s why we have thinkers like Oliver Wendell Holmes rhapsodising about being “70 years young.” Then there’s this moron who warbled about youth being “the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.” 

Maybe to Picasso, sketching an elderly fisherman bronzed by the sun and too much wine. Bah, humbug to the rest of us. 

I think the poet Yeats knew where it was at: “The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” 

Joan Rivers was more succinct: “Age sucks!” It’s just a step away from loose skin, dribbling and senility. 

To be sure, it can be a state of mind. I mean, if you are reasonably healthy, then it only matters if you are cheese. In Dr Mahathir’s case, he only realised he was geriatric when the candles on his cake resembled a prairie fire. 

There are certain things about getting old that the young will never grasp…until they get there. 

Example: there was this Netflix series The Kaminsky Method. Starring Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin, it was a portrait of ageing masculinity and friendship between two men.

My friends all loved it but it left the younger generation – my daughter, my nephews and nieces – cold. Apparently, there’s an unending generation gap. 

I suppose that’s why they call the younger generation a group that’s alike in many disrespects. 

This “getting old” business is sneaky too: like a fog, it creeps up on you. There you are, just minding your business and, wham, you’re 40.

I was incredulous and not a little outraged when that happened. OK, the outrage stemmed from the fact that it was my birthday but it was also Lent and I was off the booze.

Once you’re over the forties, you’d be surprised how rapidly everything speeds up. Suddenly everything’s in fast forward mode and you’ve officially hit Life In The Fast Lane.  

This does not mean what it does in the West – partying and living it up. It simply means you’ve entered life’s merry-go-round and it’s up to you to keep it merry. 

At least as merry as a man in his late 60s can shape it. Either way, the alternative isn’t worth dwelling on. 

Don’t get me wrong. There are some benefits. I get discounts on rail and bus tickets. Some girl actually offered me her seat on the Aerotrain the other day. Of course, I took it: you never can tell.

There are other benefits. Have you noticed that the older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for? 

Nor do we have to worry about avoiding temptation. At my age, it avoids me like the plague.  

And there are the occasional fillips. In two weeks, I have to attend the birthday of an old friend. Old is the operative word here: he’s as old as some trees in Taman Negara. And, occasionally, he addresses me as “you young whipper-snapper.”  

It is during those moments when I am in my element. 

ENDS

Smith to witness: “You mean he was as drunk as a judge.”

Judge (interrupting): “You mean as drunk as a lord.”

Smith: “Yes, My Lord.”  

It’s a little known fact that raccoons are partial to their tipple of choice.

This explains why when the American state of Virginia outlawed the sale of alcohol to animals, the enactment was greeted by a resounding chorus of booze from a committee of raccoons set up to study the matter. 

The committee was outraged that they hadn’t been consulted. They were doubly outraged because, unlike humans, they weren’t xenophobic. 

They actually liked humans especially Stephen Stills and his pals, one Crosby and Nash. The trio had a song, Love The Wine You’re With, that especially resonated with the alcoholic bandits. 

Also, humans had a tendency to leave trash around which suited the raccoons just fine. 

It’s time to get on with our story which revolves around a grizzled old raccoon. He was from Virginia and, with a nod to  The Beatles, let’s call him Rocky.

Now Rocky had been part of that outraged committee and he was still brooding over the unfairness of the state legislation. 

In the glory days, he’d sampled all brands of beer. Now he was older Budweiser and his kind was suddenly being cut off from the ambrosia, the wellspring of cheer itself. 

He’d been doing what all raccoons do, which was foraging about for food under the cover of darkness. Rocky had been scrambling around on a roof of something when he became aware of a piercing crack. 

The raccoon froze. It was as if the past, the present and the future had all congregated together in this one spot. In fact, you might say it was tense. 

The next second, the ground was giving way under his feet and the old raccoon was tumbling, turning in turmoil, until he hit the ground. He thought he heard glass breaking, bottles smashing… and all the lights went out. 

When Rocky came to, he was in an unfamiliar place with a  strong smell that he recognised. 

He’d fallen into a liquor store and he was inhaling the aroma emanating from smashed bottles.

He liked what he sniffed.

Alcohol consumption is abundant in the natural world and occurs in nearly every natural ecosystem where animals consume sweet fruit and nectar – stuff that easily ferments into alcohol.  

More to the point, scientists have recently discovered raccoons living in close proximity to humans begin exhibiting signs of domestication – shorter snouts and curlier tails. 

In Rocky’s case, it had also morphed into a taste for the finer things in life like a predilection for Laphroaig 10, a smoky blended single malt whiskey that regularly knocked the socks off (former Health Minister) Ling Liong Sik in times of yore. 

Rocky thought he’d died and gone to Heaven. Everywhere he looked, there was a single malt: a Glenfiddich here, a Glenmorangie there, a Laphroaig everywhere. 

He came, he saw and he conquered. That is to say, he tasted, he imbibed, he got smashed. 

Which brings us to last Saturday, when an employee opening Joe’s Finest Liquors  was startled by smashed liquor bottles and a trail that led to the bathroom where he discovered a drunk, sleeping and spreadeagled raccoon. 

The masked miscreant shook off his stupor after a few hours of sleep. For his part, Rocky seemed none the worse for wear and even tried to purloin a few whiskey bottles to take home. The attempt was firmly rebuffed by Joe himself who felt he’d lost enough.

It just showed that the raccoon had never been drunk at all because he fitted Ogden Nash’s definition of not being soused. 

“He is not drunk, who from the floor, can rise and stand and shout for more.” 

ENDS