A belated Happy Christmas to you all!
This year HM The Queen's Christmas address focused on the importance of sport and games as a means of bringing people together. I couldn't agree more. I've always felt shooting is a marvellous recreation to bring folks together usually against a common enemy. In Blighty, pheasants. In Afghanistan, the Taliban. While you've been out of the country those game birds have become rather canny and have started fighting back. However, we've found diplomacy, making sure they've got good grain and access to water and so forth, has really helped. In fact, there's been a truce in most regions owing to the snow which is real progress. How's it going with you chaps?!
I hope you are all in good spirits (both in mind and glass) ;-) Highland mouthwash always takes the sting out of a bad Christmas whether incarcerated in the garrison or vacantly staring at great aunt Petunia's impressive baubles wishing you could still be in bed away from all the people who claim to be related to you.
You haven't missed much this Christmas really. Extreme freezing conditions, violence in the streets and being stuck in a place you don't want to be because there are no planes, trains or automobiles to 'get you the hell out'. Sound familiar? Many people in Britain might have wished to have traded places with you, in fact. Helmand is preferable to Heathrow, the Taliban far easier to deal with than mother-in-laws and I hear Sodexo do a mean Christmas lunch. Well, it looked infinitely superior to mine when I saw you all noshing on ITN news. (I really hope this was the case. I recently went to a ball catered by Sodexo and the experience triggered several days of acute anorexia.)
Well, I have to love you and leave you now. I need to go and jump start my car which has been hidden for 3 weeks in an ice-cube. The snow has begun to recede here, in some places it's completely vanished but I will venture out in my 80s ski-wear to carry out the motoring task. These clothes are what I feel most comfy in these days. In fact, I went to the Christmas Eve meet of my local hunt and everyone was very surprised to greet me dressed in snow-boarding gear complete with fur snow-boots. I cut a swathe through the tweed. But who had the last laugh when we went sledging? My tweedy companion, the Marine, looked like a human snow-ball my the end of it. He was white, wet and weary. I was as snug as a bug in a rug.
I will post another installment soon and also hope to have a few new short stories for you all.
With lots of love and wishing you all a safe, healthy and successful new year.
Charlie xx
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