A very useful feature in the Daily Telegraph informs me of the best 20 towns in Britain ‘for Christmas’. Number one on the list is the Cotswold village of Chipping Campden, to which we must surely all decamp immediately. People moan all the time that despite the profusion of new technology and our comparative affluence these days, we’re not actually much happier. But they forget to factor in things like the Daily Telegraph’s list of the best places to live in if you really like Christmas.
Think how useful that would have been to the parents of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Instead of journeying by donkey to the dusty, Hamas-run Arabic hellhole of Bethlehem, which has never actually lain silently, not even for a nanosecond, they could have hopped in a comfortable Audi 4×4 and made for Gloucestershire. Better a barn conversion than a stable, no? If only they had known. Chipping Campden came top of the list because there is the chance to do some ‘reindeer petting’, although hopefully not heavy petting, because that would be wrong, and also frequent performances from the Chipping Campden Mummers. It could hardly be better, could it?
Some mimsy place in Hampshire came second and that was the point at which I stopped reading the feature. Maybe Boston, Lincolnshire, was on the Telegraph’s list somewhere, but I rather doubt it. Ancient, noble and full of religion Boston may well be, but it has become a byword for disquiet recently, a synonym for unrest, on account of its thousand upon thousand of immigrants from what we used to call Eastern Europe and what we now, in order to be nice, call Central Europe. I was there this week to do a feature for the Sun on this very issue and, you have to say, it is remarkable, staggering, even.
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