Oh, What Fun!

Don’t be taken in by the propaganda:

a one-horse open-sleigh is no sane person’s idea

of a comfortable mode of transportation

in which to go gallivanting about

during the immediate aftermath

of a period of low atmospheric pressure

which has contributed to the formation of ice particles

somewhere high above your head, resulting in

the eventual transformation of a previously sensible-looking landscape

into a scene of uniformly bland whiteness,

otherwise known as, ‘Oh, fucking hell, it’s been snowing again.

Do we really have to take the children outside

and thereby give birth to the lie that we are somehow

fun people who enjoy life?’

But back to the one-horse open-sleigh.

To start with, horses are prohibitively expensive to buy,

to maintain, to keep fit and healthy, exercised and fed,

(yes, that is an example of unnecessary repetition, isn’t it?),

and the horse itself probably isn’t exactly thrilled

about the whole harnessed to a sleigh part of arrangement either,

seeing as horses are, by nature, wild animals,

who like to go around doing wild things –

like ‘being a horse’ –

and who have not evolved to live in a shed full of their own shit

only to be taken out to – for example –

pull a group of giddy and over-excited, simpleton, idiot humans

in an open-sleigh during freezing conditions on hazardous roads.

Horses are sociable beasts,

much like people (well, some people),

and a singular horse attached to an open-sleigh

will be acutely aware of the terrible juxtaposition

between the moronic humans it is slavishly pulling –

without, I might add, the horse’s consent –

and its own sense of alienation, isolation, and enforced equine solitude.

‘Oh, what fun it is to ride on a one-horse open-sleigh.’

Unless you’re the horse.

And even if you’re not the horse,

but one of the exploitative open-sleigh passengers/tossers,

the phrase, ‘Oh, what fun!’ will not be flying around your head

as you fly through the freezing air,

which is afforded the opportunity of freezing your face off

due to the open-top-ness of the sleigh.

But by all means jingle some bells –

even ‘all the way’, which seems unnecessarily suggestive

and has me wondering if the whole song isn’t some

veiled metaphor about misbehaving al fresco style

during the anonymity afforded by the cover of a blizzard,

and which no one else has yet noticed.

Oh, what fun it is to stay in a centrally-heated home

indulging in whatever method of oblivion-inducing

ingestion is your thing,

while waiting for sensible weather to return.