The Gold Rings Emnity

How do you feel about partridges? Alive or dead, I've never really cared about the gamey little sods either way.

But here is the new, 100% official Disappearing Man Position Statement Re: Partridges.

They can just fuck....RIGHT...off...

That is all.


Actually, that's not all. Pear trees too can wither and die. We're making shitloads of species of plants and animals extinct every year, I reckon we should put it to a secret ballot, where I get every vote because of my unabashed awesomeness, and partridges and pear trees can just both entirely, 100% fuck off into the annals of cheery, chintzy Victoriana where they so clearly belong, never to trouble poor benighted choristers with their nonsensical pairing ever the fuck again.

Of course, it's not entirely their fault. No, really, it's the fault of whichever sick fuck decided it would get them laid if they sent poultry of increasingly bizarre and troublesome variety and number to their "true love" at Christmas.

Seven swans a-swimming? Really? Was that ever a pleasant thing to suddenly find on your doorstep one ice-covered morning. A-swimming, you'll note. So this is not a crate full of pissed-off displaced evil with eyes that remember being dinosaurs and beaks that could break your arm we're talking about here. Oh no...this is seven swans...complete with at the very least, their own swanny paddling pool, filled with water. Try taking that down to your local post office, I double-dog freakin' dare you.

Never mind the three French hens scrabbling around the foreground going
"Zut alors! Zis Enlish millet is bulllshit - what, no garlic, a little oil, like it would kill you to take a little pride in your work? Well, if you sink I am laying you ze eggs under these conditions, you 'ave another sink coming, ma friend"*

Maybe that's what the six geese a-laying are all about - do you think  the true love popped the poultry psycho a note through, saying "Thanks for the hens, darling, but they won't lay. If this keeps up, we shall have to kill the family pig come breakfast time..."
"Never fear - Geese are here. Six guaranteed organic, free-range layers. Quickly my man, despatch these fine birds to the lady in question. Save the pig, save the breakfast!"

As if that wasn't lunatic enough, the next day, eight maids arrive, scratching their working class armpits and picking their scabs...Except of course they don't, do they? Oh no...the maids are fully employed, thank you very much. Milking! Oh, I'm sorry - a-milking! That means eight prime, milk-teeted cows. At which point you begin to suspect the local post office has closed up its shutters, and all the staff are hiding under the counters, pretending to be dead. In fact, round about the eight maids a-milking, I'm pretty sure we can deduce the origins of the phrase "going postal".
"Cows? You wanna send cows? I've had enough of this, mate, this is bullshit!"
"Cowshit..."
BANG BANG BANG,
"Don't interrupt me again, motherfucker!!"

Nine ladies. Dancing. 
Nine upper-class dancing girls. OK fine, I know plenty of people who'd think that was a great Christmas present all on its own, so we'll let it go for now, though exactly who they're dancing with is perhaps a question that bears pornographic examination. The milkmaids? Is there some sort of Victorian lesbian daisy-chain of gavotting and Gay Gordonning going on here, in between the cowshit, the French hens going on strike, the four calling birds phoning home, the six geese honking, the seven swans pecking the bejeesus out of all comers, and the partridge, looking smugly down from its perch in the pear tree, going
"Fucking idiot...this is never gonna work..."

Push all thoughts of lesbian gavotting out of your head though, cos here come ten leaping chinless, clueless aristos, and we all pretty much know upon whom they're leaping, and to what purpose.


Closely followed by eleven pipers. Piping.
Eleven hairy-arsed Scottish fucks with over-developed forearms and a sideline of cat-strangling.

What kind of demented psycho-stalker wakes up in the morning, sees his demented gifts of poultry, gamebirds, livestock, moderately unskilled farm hands and well-bred louts haven't yet softened the heart or loosened the drawers of his true love and thinks: "I know - eleven pipers, that'll have her eating out of my jodhpurs!"

So in the midst of all the various poultry noises, the hens wandering round clutching little placards that just say "Non!", the cows being worried to the point of liquid incontinence by the honking of geese and the dead-eyed malevolence of the swans, the milkmaids and the ladies getting indiscriminately ravished by the gymnastic lords and the partridge, by this point frankly pissing itself in contemptuous laughter at the increasing desperation of stalker-boy back home, and, having waited eleven days for the bloody things to ripen, having the occasional nibble of pear while it can, there's a knock at the door, and eleven besporraned porridge-slurpers start up with a rousing chorus of "Just Ye Wait, Ye Englishe Bastards, Ye!"**

Which goes on for a whole day, until the drummers arrive. Now anyone who knows anything about rock and roll knows that while all the girls go for the singers or the guitarists, the drummer's accepted role in any gathering is to out-drink every other fuck and be just that little bit more mentally deranged than everybody else. So there you are - the hens have been slaughtered, and there's a roast chicken note in the air, the calling birds are now reversing the charges on a telegram to the New World, trying to get Google Maps on their Blackberries and thinking about going home, the swans are marking off a zone of death around their territory, the geese have explained to the cook how in non-geometric four-dimensional space, it really is possible to make an omelette without breaking eggs, cos secretly, geese are very clever birds, the cows have heard about that "jumping over the moon" line that wandered in from another song and are now playing hopscotch in the hall to improve their bovine dexterity, the maids are all completely shagged out and are swapping cigarettes and stories with the equally disheveled ladies, the lords have gotten bored and decided to see which of them can bag a brace of turtle doves, by Jove, and the Scotsmen have been threatened by the local police, but are standing their ground till they get paid, when  in come twelve - count them, twelve! - drummers to give the whole Christmas scene a few quick choruses of "We Will Rock You".

Meanwhile, the recipient of all this stalker psychosis takes the five gold rings - really the only acceptable bit of this cavalcade of Christmas crap, and not entirely coincidentally, the only bit anyone ever really likes to sing - grabs a now-mushy pear and the partridge, and fucks off to enter the Victorian equivalent of the Witness Protection Programme,


Apart from that, it was a good rehearsal at choir tonight. Thanks for asking...


* This broad national stereotype is brought to you by Cliches R Us.
** Yep, this one too.