Pot-addled hillbilly writes Christmas card, finds money to buy stamp!

Holy shit!

For the first time in fifty years I got a Christmas card from my old pal Kipling!

I do believe the dude is moving into geriatric sentimentality!

I'm feeling kinda bad. In the first place, while I've often thought about it, I've never actually sent out a Christmas card in my life. Keeping the social end of things up to civilized standards has never been my department, and I therefore rely on the partner of the day to take care of these matters.

I would have thought the same rules obtain in Kipling's house. They have for fifty years!

Wonder what's gone wrong?

Senility is setting in?

In the second place, I'm feeling bad because I only picked up that Season's greeting three weeks post-Xmas. Ya, we're a long ways from the Post Office here at Falling Downs, and once or twice a month is more than enough contact with the outside world.

Nevertheless, I was touched by the generous gesture of my old pal sending a Christmas greeting.

We've seen a lot of bridges submerged beneath the waters of progress, we have.

When those bouncers at The Manor chased me three miles up Waterloo Avenue one drunken night, Kipling was there.

Well, not exactly; he was back at The Manor enjoying his next lap dance...

When we trashed that joint in Fergus, and I had to single-handedly fight off the bouncers, Kipling was there.

Well, not exactly. He was already in the car twisting one up...

When my Dart GTS was steaming south on the Hanlon at an honest 150 mph, on bald tires, Kipling was there, and I remember that because that was the exact moment his girlfriend chose to claw his eyes out over some imagined indiscretion of his with some floozy from The Manor...

Hey, you'd remember that too if it was you hanging on to the steering wheel at 150 mph while a not-too-happy couple was sorting out their marital discords with fisticuffs right next to ya!

At 150 mph...

And he was there when that biker-cum-trucker forced me onto the running board of his Peterbilt for a piss on the 402 highway.

Well, not exactly "there," but inside the cab yucking it up with the driver at the expense of the poor schmuck stuck on the running board with his wang waving in the freezing 70 mph breeze...

Ya, it's been a lot of water under the bridge and a lot of bridges under water...

Thanks for the Christmas card, pal!