‘Dia de los Santos Inocente’ whose comparable day in an Anglo-Saxon world might be April Fools’ Day. A day for tricks and jokes. The 28th December, the day King Herod ordered his troops to hunt down and slaughter all male children under two years. Only the Holy Family were already in Egypt, hence the black humour ‘joke’ was on Herod.
BrainRot.com suggests looking out for paper men stuck on your back, silly hats on the street and checking the newspapers. The flour bombing and egg fights are elsewhere, the headwear is ubiquitous, but only strung along the gutter line of the traders’ stalls. Which leaves the broadsheets. Where I find a footballing story with the incendiary revelation that PSG’s Mbappé intends transferring to FC Barcelona and not Real Madrid. A Scot’s equivalent would be a ‘Daily Record’ report that Celtic and Rangers were to amalgamate. Or in UK political equivalence, would be like Westminster unilaterally declaring Glasgow the new capital of Scotland.
So as the Spanish day of tricks and jokes, it has much the same relevance as April Fools’ Day, yet it poses the thought as to how the darkest element of the Christmas story got such a flippant adjunct.
For that, it’s relevant to remember that the Christian church was young and insecure, competing for relevance against the Roman pantheon of deities, and in particular the ten-day festival of Saturnalia. The winter bacchanalia of revels, that with perseverance would be syncretically subsumed, to reappear as Christmas. Still, there would have been a need for a ‘safety valve’, a way to let off steam, to slowly smother that pagan festival. Enter the ‘Lords of Misrule’, or as in Scotland, ‘The Abbot of Unreason’. Where a peasant, one of the little people, was elevated to kinghood and all had to obey his edicts for a day. For the elite, the endurance was short and their memories were long. From there it’s a short step to a day dedicated to japes, jokes and egg bombing.
Once spotted; scribed in purple on a portaloo – portapotty – thunderbox*…. ‘A Regal Experience’.
*delete as appropriate.
Design is everything. Your brief is to modernise a railway station for the modern age. A station that just happens to be the busiest in the nation. A brief that emphasises handling both people and as trains. (Listening Euston? You have a problem). As well as allowing for the ‘facilitation of the retail opportunity’.
All the re-construction work operates as intended; that is until another creative designs the wheeled suitcase. Why it took Him so long will be for future generations to ponder. (actually She did the drawing several decades ago, only it got lost in His in-tray).
They’re passing through the station’s x-ray channel, (aka the Security Theatre), the first roller case is retrieved, set down, where upon it does what gravity insists and rolls off. A loose unattended bagatelle bouncing off legs and heading for the highest score pocket and the gate to the platform.
That unfortunate architect had prescribed a highly polished two-degree sloping floor, but hadn’t allowed for gravity’s discovery and the invention of the wheel.
The afflicted cart’s owner, a pin-ball wizard, reacts by placing the second larger, presumably heavier cart on its wheels and takes off to retrieve the wander-bout piece. The result: Charlie Chaplin would have been proud.
Mission statement penned outside a toilet:
“At One Hundred Restrooms we believe that every toilet visit should be a five minute well-being boost, a moment to relax and recover in a safe and hygienic environment. Enjoy your break”. Note; no mention of the charge to spend a ‘penny-euro’ or the sloth-like queue.
On finding the Guinness-confirmed ‘world’s smallest window’ and pondering how to explain its scale, without resorting to a selfie posed hand. I’d considered a plane tree’s leaf, but that would have swamped its embrasure. A cola can, but that would have constituted product placement. An orange, but the supermarket won’t open today. Then I find inspiration lying in the gutter.
