<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nativity<\/strong><\/p>\n Bethlehem is bolted shut <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ray Miller<\/strong> has supported John Cooper-Clarke, Attila the Stockbroker and many lost causes. He’s had poems in The British Journal of Psychiatry and, believe it or not, The Guardian.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Decorations of Mass Destruction is to deck the estate with boughs of tacky shit, You fear for the aviator (or aviatrix) or, engine screaming to match the radio\u2019s rattle, The plastic Mary holds the Christ Child to her but heavy on ordinance. Best do what they say: <\/p>\n Neil Fulwood<\/strong> is the son of a truck driver and could never understand, as a kid, how come Santa covered the entire world in just one night when it took his dad all day to do two drops in London then drive back to the Midlands. He has since realised that Santa isn\u2019t constricted by legislation around speed limits and tachographs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nativity Bethlehem is bolted shut and there no jobs in this England the innkeepers hold cardboard doors when he been on his bike so long that say no room and we full up for twenty, forty miles and more an angel\u2019s crying for her mum and left and right his cycle turn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twelve-days-of-christmas-2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6152"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6286,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152\/revisions\/6286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand there no jobs in this England
\nthe innkeepers hold cardboard doors
\nwhen he been on his bike so long
\nthat say no room and we full up
\nfor twenty, forty miles and more
\nan angel\u2019s crying for her mum
\nand left and right his cycle turn
\nthe shepherd cannot find his flock
\nwhere wise men have all been and gone
\na donkey\u2019s ears have fallen off
\nand I have seen his ears prick up
\nwhile fathers laugh and mothers blub
\nthat night is peeling off the wall
\nwho bring the living wages down
\nas heaven crashes to the stage
\nand I can\u2019t bear to watch my own
\nas everyone holds up their phone
\nbut there\u2019s no call for you, my son,
\nand Bethlehem is bolted shut
\nfor there no jobs in this England.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>
\nThe majority opinion being that the traditional
\ntimeline (twelve days before, twelve days after)
\nis for losers, it starts in earnest mid-November:
\nan arms race of Christmas decorations. The goal<\/p>\n
\nlights flashing on-off-crimson-gold, until (viewed
\non Google earth) each street looks like a crude
\ntinsel-coloured version of a landing strip.<\/p>\n
\nin fog-bound descent from the Heaviside Layer
\nbanking hard to avoid an inflatable Santa
\nand a giant snowman looming through the mist;<\/p>\n
\na Cessna strafing a glowing Nativity scene
\npulls up fast and roars away, the slipstream
\nstirring fag ends around the lowing cattle.<\/p>\n
\nas radiance engulfs them. It\u2019s a searchlight beam
\nfrom the police helicopter. The armed response team
\nare light on gold and frankincense and myrrh<\/p>\n
\nswitch off the Christmas lights and back away.<\/p>\n