Madam, – Like Tennyson’s last sob over the year’s last hours a century ago, an evil spirit seems to haunt the last hours of our own benighted isle.
With the economy in free fall, the banks in need of recapitalisation, the cat among the pigeons in the bishops’ palaces, the media’s continual harping on society’s ills, 2009 will surely be a year to forget. Heavily hang the holly and the ivy leaves. – Yours, etc,