Holiday news.

I'm very behind here, but I wanted to share the Christmas card we got from our local Lib Dem committee. As far as I can see, they are a centrist party of the type many Americans say they want, and to those people I'm sorry to say they don't seem to be taking Britain by storm. But you have to respect a political party for having the courage to take their Christmas card in this direction. For comparison, the Labor party mailing was a list of phone numbers for community and emergency services, more useful perhaps but less memorable. There's a blog I check in on occasionally, "Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year 2014," that has a running bit called Lord Bonkers' Diary where the author writes in the voice of an Edwardian aristocrat. In other recent political news, a special election in a neighboring constituency was handily won by the Green Party, specifically a plumber named Hannah who looks like Judy Greer and also finished her plasterer certification while she was campaigning.

I was assuming that St. Patrick's Day wouldn't really be a thing here, certainly by Boston standards. But Manchester is Irish enough to have a St. Patrick's parade on the nearest weekend that I was told starts out more family oriented and then becomes increasingly raucous. On the seventeenth, there was a Mass at the kids' school followed by tea and soda bread in the parish hall. After the service, some of the girls who take Irish step dancing classes performed in the church. One of the girls just won a big competition and is going to finals in Chicago. I was standing behind a pillar (packed to the rafters) so my vision was sometimes limited to the wild bounce of hair ribbons and startled movements from people sitting near the aisles when the feet of girls dancing past them were flung upward. "Maybe we'll see a few of the lads up here next year?" said Father J.