Christmas At The Manor -- 2010

This will be somewhat shorter than my usual. At the moment, total confusion reigns. My brats make it a point to assemble for Christmas every year, but so far only Mark, my 'designer' son, is just in from New York, and Victoria was in Toronto anyway, giving a series of lectures entitled "Warren G. Harding. Why?" She also had a bit part in the TV series "Rookie Blue" where she was tied up and dropped from a building. That girl does march to the tune of a different drummer.

My other son Mark had got some leave from his physics stint at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and hooked up with Isolde in Vienna, where she is first violinist with the Vienna Philharmonic. Unfortunately, snowstorms ruled that part of Europe, and they had not yet managed to get a flight. Those two can be persuasive, however, and I have hopes.

I am glad to report that the Compte de Rienville was here in good time. The weather was also a factor that was causing Air France any number of problems, but the Compte managed to get himself to Ramstein in Germany, where he managed to hitch a ride with American troops returning to Andrew A.F.B. in the U.S. Two cases of Veuve Clicquot helped his request along, and soon he had reached the Manor after a short hop from Washington. Thus happiness reigns. Christmas without the Compte? Unthinkable.

An unexpected visitor was Bohdan, who supervises my sugar beet holdings in Ukraine. He was on his way to visit some relatives in Saskatchewan (which is 90% Ukrainian anyway) so he should feel right at home. He had dropped in with some disturbing news. The new government apparently saw fit to request a sizeable "gift", without which certain taxes would rise to horrific levels. Now I had straightened out this corruption thing with the previous government in the person of Yuliya Tymoshenko (she of the nonsensical braid) but the new government in the person of Viktor Yanukovych was unaware of any agreements, and wanted his cut.

I told Bohdan not to worry. I had some considerable leverage with Vladimir Putin, who has even more considerable leverage with Yanukovych. Things would be attended to, even if it meant a trip to Moscow. Come to think of it, my colleague in The Trade, Svetlana Marinskaya, had promised a whopper of an evening, and perhaps it was time to call in that particular marker.

Now I have to leave you. My gardener/housekeeper Consuela, with no sense of timing at all, decided to give birth on the spot. Her husband Ahmad was frantic, realizing that things were happening so fast that a trip to the hospital was out of the question. I immediately began drawing on certain skills, gave necessary orders to Bohdan, Victoria and Mark, and renewed my acquaintance with midwifery.

How this all turned out, and the adventure that Isolde and Mark experienced, will have to wait for next week's missive. So for now, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!