After being released from jury duty I thought I had a clear path to the holidays but the house guests came and brought me the flu. I hadn't been sick in years - one of the upsides of working at home - but if you have to be in bed, the week before Christmas is a wonderful time. You get to catch up on your reading, reflect on the year almost passed, recharge for the one ahead. And, if you subscribe to The Spectator, you get to enjoy the double Christmas issue full of reviews, poems, cartoons and columns, including High Life, Low Life, Real Life, Long Life, and Wild Life. Taki, author of the first, complained about the American obsession with happiness but admitted it was preferable to the British "fixation on bitterness."
