Join us at the The Hen & Chicken Inn Where you’ll be sure of a warm welcome Traditional Sunday Lunches Themed Evenings Family Friendly Good Fresh Food Real Ales Fine Wines FREE bottle of wine with every table of 4 booked using this voucher (4 x main courses) Tel: 01420 22115 www.henandchicken.co.uk The Hen and Chicken Inn, Upper Froyle, Alton, Hants GU34 4JH Tel: 01252 796979 62 Ash Street, Ash, Hampshire GU12 6LR Tel: 01420 82288 165 London Road, <strong>Holybourne</strong>, Alton, Hampshire GU34 4HA WE ARE YOUR FRIENDLY LOCAL SUZUKI DEALER OFFERING... Competitive servicing and repairs on all makes and models. Servicing, MOT station, repairs & valeting by our fully trained staff www.tcc.suzuki.co.uk Page 22 The <strong>Holybourne</strong> Village Magazine - Winter Issue 2010
In defence of Christmas People get pretty sniffy about Christmas these days - all that stuff about commercialisation, too many presents, missing the true spirit and all that - but I, for one, think it’s blooming marvellous. I am one of those people for whom Christmas means only good things, and always has. I am not (unlike the infamous ‘Mr. Christmas’ of Wiltshire, tabloid denizen who eats turkey dinner and mince pies 365 days of the year) obsessive about it, but by gum I know a good thing when I see one. And log fires, a glass of sherry, belting out carols and the odd extended episode of the Royle Family is, in my book, a very good thing indeed. For me, man’s capacity for artistic expression has reached no higher plane than the saxophone solo of I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everday by Wizzard. For me, the annual competition to spot the year’s first Christmas-themed advert on TV with my brother (won this year by the brother, who spotted fake snow and a few deccies in the back of a DFS sofa ad, the blighter) is the noblest sport a fellow could care to engage in. For me, the most garish tinsel, the tackiest tree and the corniest rooftop Santa (ideally mechanised and surrounded by flashing neon lights) is the zenith, the essence, the very pinnacle of man’s unique civilising instinct. You take your Sistine Chapel Ceilings, your Anna Kareninas and Iliads - and I’ll take a DVD of Muppets’ Christmas Carol and a glass of Sainsbury’s cava any day. I have no time for the bemoaners, the Scrooges, the holier-than-thous who tell me Christmas ain’t what it used to be, because it’s exactly what it used to be: a rollercoaster, family-fuelled, yuletide wonderland packed with advent calendars, Bing Crosby, silly hats and homemade paper chains. It’s very British - and very boring - to bang on about how overrated and awful the whole thing is, and I think Christmas spirit is about having the guts to let go a bit and love every cheesy minute of it, to stop being such a stick in the mud and get stuck into the Turkish Delight instead. If you can be nice to friends and acquaintances, and if you can take a moment to really, actually be kind to a stranger or two while you’re at it, so much the better. Wholeheartedly give something to charity, strike up conversation with a lonely soul, heartily compliment the postman on his epaulettes - whatever stuffs your turkey really. But do give some kind of brotherhood a jolly good go. And if you can’t do that, at least bung It’s a Wonderful Life in the DVD player and shed a few festive tears eh? It’s two and a half hours of heart-thawing wonder you won’t regret. In the meantime, you’ll have to excuse me while I crank up the radio volume for The Snowman and set to simmering up some mulled wine. Because that’s what the whole wondrous shebang is all about. Merry Christmas! Mike Lawrence IF by Rudyard Kipling IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, ‘ Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son! The <strong>Holybourne</strong> Village Magazine - Winter Issue 2010 Page 23
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