Merry Happy New Christmas Year from the (haha) Chairman

Greetings, Fellow Stratossers,

Well, it's that time of year again, when everyone does their best to be extra-nice to each other. Personally I dunno why we can't be like that the rest of the year as well, but I suppose we'd not have as much to moan about if that was the case. And talking of moaning - what a weird, mostly crap year it's been! Is there anyone out there who actually managed to do anything approaching "normal" since this bloody virus thing happened?? I'm keeping fingers, legs, toes and anything else I can think of (!!!) crossed that the various vaccines can be approved and rolled out in sufficient quantity to make 2021 a bit more like years of yore and we can have a bit...ok, a lot!...more joy going around.

It also crossed my mind recently that I hadn't done one of my Rants for a while. When I checked on when the last one was, I found it was back in March! Whoa!! But then thinking about why that should be, and as mentioned above, nothing much has been going on, but that's not really a good enough excuse, is it? So apols to all my fans, and rest assured that a new Rant will be coming your way shortly, filled with the usual bile, invective, weird logic, and contentious viewpoints that you all luuurrrve to pull me up on. So watch out for that, assuming the world makes it past Christmas and the End of Days predicted by the doom-mongers who're convinced the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn presages death and destruction for us all...although I suspect they've not taken into account that although those ever-so-large planets are in line, as viewed from 'ere on Earth, they're still about 400 million miles away from each other. So I, for one, won't be worrying about it too much, if at all. And actually, even if the weirdos are right after all, what can we do about it? Not a lot, methinks, so even more reason to ignore it and just get on with stuff.

Anyhow, this is in danger of turning into a Rant all of its own, which wasn't the intention - so back to its original raison d'etre, which was for me, as Chairman, to wish all of you a top festive time, or as top as you can make it, given the restrictions placed on people this year, and not just here in the UK but around the world as well.

So - Merry Crimbo and a Happy New Year, and hopefully we can all meet up in person at a Do somewhere or other in 2021.

Laterz, Y'all!

The (Social) Norm