Hopefully, that giant snow cock on your drive melted before your relatives arrived for Christmas lunch. If it didn’t- don’t worry; even Nana will get drunk enough to have her picture taken with it.

If you were good this year, Santa will have put pressies under your tree. If you were bad, you probably spent Christmas alone, sobbing carols into your microwavable turkey korma and wanking over the Queen’s speech. Either way Christmas usually ends up being the Godfather III of endings to the year.

The forced good will, saccharine merriment and soulless consumerisation of Christmas has, for many, the same effect as a large dose of gamma radiation, making us greener and angrier than the Grinch and Scrooge combined. 

The streets are clogged with shoppers meandering obstructively like extras from a George Romero film. TV is swamped by a Yule tide of audio-visual effluent and the radio spews “Christmas music” that sounds like it was recorded at gun point in Santa’s basement whilst elves scream “MORE SLEIGH BELL”.

And present giving is a ball-ache. Inspiration for that perfect gift strikes with only 72 hours remaining. You order it online and pay a fortune for delivery by Christmas only for it to arrive in late March, by which time the intended recipient has already deleted you from Facebook.

This is why the wise among us lie low at Christmas. We carry on as normal consuming neither sprouts nor sherry and at New Year we keep the partying to a minimum. We save ourselves like nubile, evangelical teens for January 25^th.

Januarymas is not about spreading “good will to all men” but rather has its roots in pure hedonism. Perhaps it’s that naked wonder round the garden that puts The Joy in your heart; maybe it’s the cheesy-sweet taste of Red Leicester and blueberry jam. Certainly no Januarymas is complete without the righteous combination of David Attenborough on mute, watched to the sound of punishing bass music.

But most important of all is the age-old Januarymas tradition of alcohol abuse. A good knees-up is essential to the proceedings and acts as a physical and spiritual cleansing so you can face February with child-like joie de vivre. So let down your hair (then put it back to keep it out of the vomit) and drink 151 rum like you want to wake up in the cupboard under the stairs with cling film on your nuts.

The transition between years is always depressing in a nostalgic sort of way and doesn’t need to be exacerbated by the weight gain, bankruptcy and failure to stick to your New Year’s resolution. Those of you who still believe in Santa should beware and remember that when Christmas hands you lemons, crack out the tequila on Januarymas.

Galen Crawley

SEPTEMBER 27^th We arrived at Bloomsbury, a seemingly vivacious place. Renowned as a centre of learning, we were surprised to find it overwhelmed by a multitude of young savages, commonly known as UGs. They swarmed in packs, sometimes purposefully heading into buildings, whilst at other times meandering aimlessly, occasionally grazing on the local produce. On more than one occasion, an UG bumped clumsily into me, oblivious of my presence. I put this down to insufficient eye sight as is the case with most semi-nocturnal creatures. Similar to the natives of Lima, they appear a depraved, drunken set of people. During daylight hours they seemed disorientated and, on occasion, even disorderly. A high percentage of this human sub-species also appear mentally unstable. Instead of communicating amongst each other they converse into a small box, sometimes just tapping on it with unerring concentration. It was inexplicable and alarming to behold.

Captain Fitzroy was particularly startled by their extraordinary dress. Shoes fit for jesters, undergarments on show and unkempt hair make up their general appearance. It can, on occasion, be difficult to distinguish one sex from the other. Some females have an alarming amount of flesh on display and, quite like the common male peacock, stride amongst the crowd with an expression of self-worth whilst intermittently squawking. The males behave with utter vulgarity often clutching and grabbing at the females without consent; it has been said, that the love of the chase is an inherent delight in man – a relic of an instinctive passion.

It is apparent that they are predominantly nocturnal in their habits. A brief discussion with a local Bloomsburian diverted our attention to the further reaches of Farringdon. In the early hours of the morning swathes of UGs gathered in a building not unlike a derelict textile factory named “Fabric”. As we made our way down some stairs besmeared with filth and gore we marked that these savages had exceedingly dilated pupils, uncontrollable jaw spasms and regular twitching of the limbs. They sweated profusely and, being herd animals, stood in a large room huddled together listening to noise even the din of war could not rival. The savage Red Indians of Bahia Blanca are quite civil in comparison to this monstrous creation. It is hard to believe they are of the same race as us. Before this experience I could not have believed how wide the difference between savage and civilized man was: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal.

It was only on leaving Bloomsbury that Captain Fitzroy and I learned the derivation of the word UG. It is not, as we had thought, due to the Ugliness of these bizarre creatures but because they are, in fact, Under-Graduates.