SAINT CLUB Xmas Letter 1984

My esteemed little goons, ghouls, and gibber-twiggers:

With this greeting I make you a free gift of a word so new that it has yet to appear in the Oxford English Dictionary. You, the uniquely privileged-members of this exlusive organization, may actually be the very first (after myself) to use this absolutely latest addition to the tongue that Shakespeare spake. Which, no matter how otherwise illiterate you may be, puts you one up on Willie.

The meaning of "gibber-twigger" could be defined as: "one who has the sublime ability to understand the monkey-chatter of official Government documents, and translate it exactly as if it were an authentic language".

Thus you will immediately grasp my point when I remind you that at this moment in time (as distinct from other moments to be found in acid rain, bagpipe symphonies, and cold rice pudding) the approach of Christmas is already an on-going situation.

This means that it is once again time for me to put the bite on you for whatever subscriptions, purchase orders, or supplementary donations can be extracted from you before you plough your year's ill-gotten profits into entirely selfish indulgences like boys and birds, BMX bikes, booze, and video nasties.

As our indefatigable Hon Sec informs you, we managed again this year to hit our target of a four-figure contribution to the always strained finances of the Arbour Youth Centre. We now have a crackpot ambition to surpass our own performance and set a new record for the year ahead.

But this cannot be achieved by some sort of spontaneous combustion.
It can only be done by squeezing more out of you. Or, if this prospect is just too painful for you to contemplate, by you helping to enlarge our membership, by recruiting new suckers who can be conned into parting with more of the lolly which you are too sticky-fingered to let go of yourselves. I am hoping that with your usual unscrupulous regard for your own welfare you will not let us down.

In which belief, I wish that all your pear trees may be full of partridges. Or at least pigeons.