RECOMMENDED: FAUN

The Dodologist is listening to German goth/folk/neofolk/dark wave/neopagan folk/whatever band Faun. And he happens to be of the opinion that more people should do just that. Thus, one of his favourite Faun songs:



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NEOFOLK AND THE PALINGENESIS OF PARANOIA

My friend Lord Bassington-Bassington has published a post on neofolk and politics. As we both love neofolk and hate the fascist scum that is sadly attracted by this glorious music, I agree with both his intentions and analysis.

As Bassy points out, in addition to these creepy crawlers, a second problem is those (mostly on the left) who see fascists everywhere. As the long eared one, I too have spent some time discussing with the Ukranian scholar Anton Shekhovtsov. A frustrating experience, I’m sad to say.

I started writing a comment on the subject, but it morphed into something much longer and finally became a blog post of its own. This blog post. To fully understand what is going on here, you probably should read Lord Bassington-Bassingtons's post first.

I believe the most serious problem with Shekhovtsov’s approach, is his use of Roger Griffin's definition of fascism:

"Fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism."

Palingenesis in general means rebirth (Christ uses it to describe what will happen on judgment day), though in Griffin’s definition it is restricted to national rebirth.

So according to this definition, fascism is a form of populist ultra-nationalism, which strives for a rebirth of the nation, that is to say a return to a postulated former glory.

I agree with his lordship that the definition has its good sides, as when used to underline the continuity between old fascists and those pathetic developments the go through when renaming what they do silly things like national anarchism.

But it simply isn’t good enough in the long run. For two reasons: Because it is too wide and because it is too narrow.

It is too wide because it includes a lot of people who are not fascists. The longing for national rebirth is hardly original to fascism. It was common to many romantic, nationalist groups in 19th century. It is an idea traceable back at least almost three centuries. It was the core of the neo-druidic groups that grew up around the dream of re-creating the Welsh nation. As it has been the core of every nationalist movement among minorities in Europe since then.

And all of these people were not fascists. Not by far.

That does not mean that I deny that this is an important element of fascism, only that it is not enough to establish a definition of fascism. Which brings me to my second point: The definition is to narrow, because it does not include other criteria that can separate actual fascists from those imagined to be so by Shekhovtsov and his ilk.

Personally I like Michael Mann’s definition: “Fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism.”

It is in agreement with Griffin’s on the importance of a transcendental form of nationalism, but adds two fundamental elements: An opinion about the role of the state (totalitarian, militaristic, anti-democratic, führer-led) and about the importance of paramilitary groups.

According to this definition you are not a fascist if you simply dream of national paligenesis. You must also have certain opinions on how this palingenesis is to happen and the role of the state in this rebirth. It is possible that it is this Griffins means by “populist ultra-nationalism”, but that is by no means clear.

So the problem with Shekhovtsov’s approach is not simply that he is way to free with the fascist label, the problem is that he judges people to be fascists based on a definition that at its best is able to tell you that they might be fascists.

My own take on who are fascists and not is rather simper. To quote one of my comments on Shekhovtsov’s blog:

“In my naive view of the world, a fascist is someone who sympathises with fascist politics. They may retreat into metapolitics, but they do so because they see that this is not the best of times for their political opinions. So they keep the flame burning, waiting for the times to change.”

Another problem with Shekhovtsov’s approach is that he tends to call people fascists even without documenting any palingenetic tendencies, not to say any indication of populist ultra-nationalism. Symbols that he imagines to be fascist, combined with a certain nietzschean and/or spenglerian leaning in the lyrics, is more than enough for him.

But the biggest problem with Shekhovtsov’s approach is that he seems more or less unable to view his own position critically. Like His Lordship I have tried arguing with him, and his ability not to answer to concrete critiscisms of his analysis is rather astonishing.

Shekhovtsov is oh so willing to label people fascists, but rather less willing to turn a critical eye on his own analysis. Rather a typical scholar in other words.
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AT THE END OF AN ERA

Today the sad news ticked in that Norwegian actor and comedian Dag Frøland is dead, a mere 64 years old. Frøland retreated from the theatre more than two decades ago and lived more or less as a recluse, but his genius is still very much remembered.

His parodies are among the funniest in Norwegian comedy, but The Dodologist happens to think that one of his greatest moments is this, a lamentation of the fall of European culture:



RIP
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MEL GIBSON, DOGGY STYLE

Mel Gibson is soon to return to the big screen, which means a time beckons for him to comment on those ... unfortunate comments. If the comments in this clip is anything to go by, he is not entirely ready for the job:



Via Harry's Place. I have, by the way, added Harry's Place contributer Edmund Standing to the blog list.
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SCARY CONSPIRACY REVEALED

As I said a few posts ago: Some things are just too damn scary.

As we all know, Illuminati has been ruling the world for the last 200 years or so, creating History As We Know It to conceal their cruel, evil and satanic intentions. But now an even scarier group has entered The Stage Of History. They call themselves Itanimulli – which obviously is a lot more evil than Illuminati, because it is Illuminati spelled backwards.

As I said, this is just Too Damn Scary. Not the least when you go to their web-page, www.itanimulli.com. (Cut and paste to see The Scary Truth for yourselves.)

Thanksalot to an observant friend for informing me of this Damn Scary force in our midst. I recommend that he escapes into the woods for a while ...
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BE THE FOOD YOU FEED THE CROCS

Photo: The Dodologist

A sign at the Skansen outdoor museum in Stockholm. It says: "Our crocodiles eat a lot! We need more visitors."
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MORE EUROBEAT, THE SOUND OF PARA PARA

As I said a post ago, it's really only one version of Ike Ike that counts, the one by Tri-Star. And lo and behold, here it is:



As a bonus, here is a Para Para video with parts of Ganguro, by Franz "Mad Cow" Tornado and the Yamanba-Gals:



Franz Tornado (real name Federico Rimonti) is a personal Eurobeat favourite that shows up in a endles row of different "groups", of which Franz Tornado and the Royal Eurobeat Orchestra of Bazookistan is one of the best (names, that is). The endles changes of band names is a joke, as most of it is really made by a rather small group of people.

Another favourite - and part of the Tornado clan - is Bazooka Girl (real name Cristiana Cucchi). Here is a video with parts of her Velfarre 2000:



And finally, I linked to it yesterday, but the deep and subtle poetry of Bazooka Girl's Cantare Ballare (Happy Eurobeat) simply must be shared again:


Cantare Ballare (Happy Eurobeat)

Suck a Bazooka
No One Sleep In Tokyo
Din Don Dan
Money Go
Night of Fire
Bandolero Comanchero
Boom Boom Girl
Virtual Love

Go Go Dance
Technotronic Flight
Shadow In The Night
Telephone
Try Me
Ike Ike
Dancing In The Jungle
Dancing In The Maharaja Night

Mad Cow
Bazooka Man
Boom Boom Japan
Hot Girl
Deja Vu
O Sole Mio
My Only Star
Don’t Stop The Music
Love Generation

Mad Cow
Bazooka Man
Boom Boom Japan
Hot Girl
Deja Vu
O Sole Mio
My Only Star
Don’t Stop The Music
Love Generation
(Cantare Ballare)
(Cantare Ballare)

My Sweet Banana
Dancing At Twin Star
Milan Milan Milan
Get My Love
Round ‘n’ Round
Hot Love & Emotion
Deltadance.com
Be My Lover

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PARA PARA - AS IT SHOULD SOUND

My friend, the Mad Mullah, has put up an instruction video for Para Para dancing - that subtle and lovely Japanese addition to teen culture. But ... it's without music. That's really utterly pointless. Now this is what Para Para should look - and sound - like:



It's silly. It's embarrassing. It's annoying. And the music is the perfect drug for pointless tasks in the office - when mixed with at least six shots of espresso.

And the best thing, The Very Best Thing, this being music directed at japanese 14 year olds and mostly written by Italians, is of course the lyrics. As some of you may not be fluent in Japanese, here are the English lyrics for Ike Ike (which really should be heard in the Tri-Star version):

Ike Ike

Living night
I need to feel imagination
Yes, all right
I need a rhythm invasion
Sing together "na-na-na-na"
I wanna dance all the night
Oh - oh - oh Oh - oh - oh

Ehy, DJ John Robinson
Make me feel the rhythm and hot desire
In Roppongi Tokyo
Keep me into your heaven
Baby, take me higher

Ikeike
Lucky night, pretty girl
Mini-skirt Ikeike
Hi-heel shoes and then you feel the power
Ikeike, magic nights
And the blue, my baby, will go bye
Uoh-ho

Lovely night
You take me up imagination
In my heart
You bring me up your confusion
When you dance I'm gonna head out
I like to dance eurobeat
Oh - oh - oh Oh - oh - oh


It's great poetry, though not quite as good as the lyrics to Cantare Ballare (Happy Eurobeat). Then again, few things are. That might be a reason for cheerfulness. Then again, maybe not.

(As to the title of this post: This was written listening to Matt Howdens record As They Should Sound. It's not half bad. But it's useless for Para Para.)
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WATCH YOUR CAPS!

Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
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IT BITES!

Some things ... Some things are just too damn scary ...

This, my friends, is a Fleshlight. It's for the pleasuring of ... male ... members ...

Though it's of course not a regular Fleshlight. It's a "... Succu Dry Sex in a Can from Fleshlight, the world’s first vampire inspired sex toy for men. Take a walk on the dark side and get familiar with this pale brew. But be careful! Though this may feel like love at first bite, make sure you have wood poised to penetrate before you get completely drained!"

The Dodologist is ... fascinated by it's dedication to ... truthfulness and ... detail. As they say: "The amazingly detailed vampire mouth and fangs beg you to drive your wooden stake deep inside."

Perhaps some other day, baby.
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Thanksalot to Lady Mju for the tip.
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“THE MAD GARDENER'S SONG", BY LEWIS CARROLL

He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
‘At length I realise,’ he said,
The bitterness of Life!’

He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister’s Husband’s Niece.
‘Unless you leave this house,’ he said,
“I’ll send for the Police!’

He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
‘The one thing I regret,’ he said,
‘Is that it cannot speak!’

He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
‘If this should stay to dine,’ he said,
‘There won’t be much for us!’

He thought he saw a Kangaroo
That worked a coffee-mill:
He looked again, and found it was
A Vegetable-Pill.
‘Were I to swallow this,’ he said,
‘I should be very ill!’

He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four
That stood beside his bed:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bear without a Head.
‘Poor thing,’ he said, ‘poor silly thing!
It’s waiting to be fed!’

He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage Stamp.
‘You’d best be getting home,’ he said:
‘The nights are very damp!’

He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
‘And all its mystery,’ he said,
‘Is clear as day to me!’

He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
‘A fact so dread,’ he faintly said,
‘Extinguishes all hope!’

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KEEPING THE FLAME ALIVE

These days it seems like every Norwegian is reading a book (or rather a series of books) called Min Kamp. Which in German is ... Mein Kampf (though rumours are the German tranlation will have another title).

We don't like modern copyists here at The Dodologist. We like the old stuff. The originals. So it's nice to see that someone is keeping the flame alive:





(Ehr, borrowed from AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com.)
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A JINGLE IN MY BONES

Just before Christmas, December the 23rd to be precise, I had the pleasure of letting loose on the world the 4th issue of Knokkelklang. Knokkelklang (which is best translated as Jingle Bones) is a blog magazine dedicated to “the marginal, the curious, the horrible and the fantastic” and it’s edited by a dodologist very close to you. Two articles this time are by theverysame dodologist:

The vampire as victim
Or: It’s terribly sad, but I have to kill you. Boo hoo!

Child In Time
Desmond Child & Rouge – the best band you've never heard

Oh, come on, take a peek.
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THE WHY OF THE VAMPIRE

OK, so I’m a vampirologist. That might sound like fun to you, but I tell you: These days it’s a lot of hard work. Not only the watching of mormon teenage vampire fantasies or the unspeakable parts (of which I may speak, but then of course have to kill you), but also all the parts that speak. Especially all the speaking-to-journalists-parts.

It’s not that I mind journalists as such (at least not more than the average man, which is, of course, a great deal); it’s rather that they are all so bloody repetitive. It’s like they are not separate creatures, with separate minds. They are one head, only able to come up with the same idea over and bloody over again.

So, for the last two months, I’ve been asked why vampires are so popular right now approximately fifty times. Man, if questions could be staked …

Anyway, here it is: It’s because it six years since last time - more or less. (That was Boring Buffy, by the way.)

Vampires are fascinating creatures. I tend to sum the fascination up as “sex, death, violence, blood and embroidery”. They give a director or writer, serious or not, a chance to dive into some pretty juicy subjects, subjects that touch on some of the basics of our human existence.

They also are a lot of fun. In 1820, the year after the publication of John Polidori’s The Vampyre, it was dramatized no less than four times for Parisian theatres. Two of those dramatisations where comedies. So ever since the introduction of the modern vampire, its comic potential has been obvious.

It is, in other words, no big mystery why the vampire appeals to us. So, ever since it became a movie star, the vampire has returned again and again to the movie screen to haunt us. It is, after all, a ghost.

The problem is that, fun and fascinating as the vampire is, it is also a rather limiting figure. The vampire is so well established as a pop cultural icon that you mess with it at your own peril. Move too far away from the established concept, and you have to spend a lot of time explaining why and defending your choices.

The point is this: For a while the vampire is fun. Then it becomes repetitive. And then it becomes boring. So you put it back in its coffin. Six years later, and a whole new generation of teenagers are out there. Then it’s time to raise the bugger from the grave and off we go again.

That’s about it, really.
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"A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES", BY DYLAN THOMAS

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs. "He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

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