A letter from Santa Claus

Dear Freiherr Hippo von Lawn,

As you can probably imagine, I have received some strange requests in my time but this one takes not only the milk and cookies, but the mince pie and brandy as well!

I was wondering if you could give me any advice on how to satisfy this little girl’s request as, having checked her records, I note she is an exceptionally good little girl.

Your Aye.

Santa Claus.

PS: Same as usual for you this year, a case of 25 year old Glenfarclas?  I hate to Nanny you but you should really give it up you know.  I did ages ago.  I just stopped pouring it down my neck.  You'd be mortified at the amount of whisky, brandy and sherry I quietly pour down people's sinks on Christmas eve.  It's the mince pies that'll do me at this rate!

Sehr Geehrter Sankt Niklaus!

Long time no hear!

We hippos, especially the pigmy or dwarf kind (Choeropsis liberiensis or Hexaprotodon liberiensis) are an extremely endangered species, and are incredibly difficult to look after in captivity (just ask Marcia, my wife). 

As we are easily bored, we get up to all sorts of mischief and are very clumsy round the house although we can, with a lot of patience, be more or less toilet trained.  I am fifty four but still miss the toilet bowl but am nevertheless proud I learnt to stand on two legs, but I am sure you understand with front legs as short as mine, in relation to my body length and girth, I am always shooting blind.

Male Pigmy Hippos, like their larger cousins, are extremely territorial.  They will tolerate females and love children but are extremely aggressive towards fellow males of any species unless the interlopers approach very slowly exhibiting all the signals of subservience (heads low avoiding eye contact, that sort of thing).  Human males especially tend to march straight into my territory, heads held high, stare me in the eye and try to grab my paw and shake it and then hug my wife and give her a kiss.  No wonder we hippos are considered the most dangerous creature in Africa and so many of my extended family have gored human males.

The lack of manners displayed by the average human would make it awkward for the little girl’s parents to enjoy any kind of social life at home.  The hippo would attack the male dinner guests and try to hump the female ones.  You did not give the age of the little girl but from the timbre of her delightful voice, I suspect she is still of an age where it would be better for her to learn the facts of life from the birds and bees, or later on from her natural parents, rather than observing a rutting hippo attempting to mount a wheelie bin.  I make no apology.  It is instinct, hard wired into us.  We cannot resist wheelie bins and love barging them over and stamping them flat, intolerant as we are of unrequited love. 

I know that you hate the idea of letting a child down but I honestly think you would be better off giving her and her parents air tickets to South Africa so that they can visit my newly born nephew, Harry.

Just one bottle of Glenfarclas for me this year, thank you, I'm going to give it up.

Mit Freundlichem Gruss

Hippo von Lawn

PS:  Land on the roof, there’s snakes in the garden.

At this time of the year, Angola cannot afford to pay its bills.  The government will give priority to paying it's bloated civil service and ignore such international bills as telecommunications uplinks, satellite bandwidth etc, and I am already experiencing a severe degradation  to internet and telephone services.  The seasonal rains usually knock out any surviving infrastructure (right now the feed from South Africa has failed so we are watching Chinese TV which is nowhere near as bad as it sounds so long as it is in small doses). So, even though slightly premature, just in case we go off line here, please accept my best wishes to you all, thank you for reading me and for all your sincere support throughout this last year and the years preceding.  Whatever holiday it is you celebrate at the end of the year, I hope you enjoy it and I hope that whatever God you believe in goes with you.

In the meantime, for the more jaded among you when it comes to the festive season, I give you this courtesy of Bashing Bambi:




I was also pretty pissed off when I didn't get my 'bike last year.