I think the tide is on the turn.

Yes I saw that ship come sailing by

Are you going to be on your own for Christmas?

No, I’m going to my cleaning lady’s.

Don’t you know anybody else? Do you actually want to spend Christmas in a stable?

I thought it seemed more Christmas like to be with the humble and the poor. I will buy the food of course but she will cook it. I don’t know if she’s got an oven but we can always have something like hamburgers on garlic bread with a side salad for one or two only one pound fifty in John Lewis . To be honest I prefer Weetabix to Turkey and I prefer the humble to the rich.

Make a Weetabix stuffing then. Just some sausage meat parsley and some mashed up Weetabix stick it in the turkey and Bob’s your uncle. Don’t you have to cook the turkey then?

Not if you’re an eagle.

Do people eat eagles in other countries? 

Well I’ve never heard of it yet but I suppose if there’s nothing else then they will try but the eagle may eat them or at least kill them and then we have the vultures coming.

I thought we were talking about Christmas

Well it’s a bit like psychoanalysis you start talking about whatever is in your mind and you don’t know where you’re going to end up.

What would a psychoanalysts think of me talking about eagles?

It’s impossible to say unless they’ve got to know you very very well and they realize that eagle represents your starving child self driven mad by rage.

I think that’s unfair on eagles actually.

Well they don’t know, do they?

But it might get back to them. Then what would happen if you live in your London suburb?

I don’t think there are eagles in the Chilterns

But what about Whipsnade Zoo though?

I know they’ve got tigers but I doubt very much that they have eagles in there

It makes you realise though doesn’t it how wrong it is to have a zoo

Donald Trump likes eagle soup so they tell me m

What rubbish you’re thinking about mock turtle soup

Do you love eagles?

I don’t know any  but I know Terry Eagleton.

He believes it was a mistake to publish iris murdoch’s poetry that was found in the attic of her house in Oxford

Once you’re dead you have no control but why didn’t she destroy it? I suppose she didn’t know she was going to get dementia and when she had that then she wouldn’t have been able to do anything sensible like destroying her poetry

Now there’s a thought at least she didn’t publish hers on the internet

I don’t think she had a computer it would have been anathema to her. She would want to feel the pen moving on the paper and that would connect to some part of her brain

Will Terry Eagleton change his mind or will Rose Mather win the booker prize!?

I have never heard of her before

Neither have I

You must have heard of her or why would you have said her name?

I’m just making it up as I go along

You could say the same about God sometimes.

Oh dear what can the matter be?

Trump’s got Zelensky strung up on the judas tree

Oh dear what can the matter be

Do you think we need Tony Blair?