All those Christmas card scenes ... horse-drawn stagecoaches in snowy country lanes, cheerful urchins playing snowballs in London streets by yellow gaslight, jolly Mr Pickwick walking with his friends, Bob Cratchett tramping home to the bosom of his loving family ... ahh, the Good Old Days.

Except they weren't. Not good at all ...

So BorgCo Personal Experiences in conjunction with MaxCo Financial Enterprises are pleased to be able to offer customers a fourteen-day Truly Dickensian Christmas Experience, so you experience first hand what it was really like for most of the population in the heyday of Queen Victoria's reign.

Having chosen Urban or Rural for your experience, on 19 December you arrive at the Welcome Centre to prepare. Here, your clothes are replaced with dirty poor-quality second-hand ragged garments, thin and far from waterproof, and pre-infested with fleas, lice and highly infectious skin diseases. Then a fully qualified dentist will drill out all your fillings, and make extra holes in any undamaged teeth to ensure you're in constant pain, after which you swallow a sucession of capsules to provide your body with an appropriate burden of internal parasites.

You are then delivered by open cart to your hovel (if rural) or slum (if urban). Each has its own quirks, but generally feature a contaminated water supply, negligible heating, no draughtproofing, leaky roofs, incredible overcrowding, nonexistent sanitary facilities, and unhygienic food storage.

For two weeks, you subsist on very poor quality food (which there's never enough of) while being required to perform seemingly endless drudgery, often outdoors in all weathers, for a despotic employer - just to earn a pittance, all of which goes on food and rent. You're always cold, often soaking wet, hungry, exhausted, in pain from your rotten teeth, and unable to afford any meaningful medical care. To add to it all, while you're busy working, other people steal your stuff.

Then, at 2330 on December 31, [MaxwellBuchanan], following his family's fine old tradition of fiscal rectitude, turns up outside your dwelling in his fancy carriage, wearing his tall top hat and smoking a big cigar, accompanied by a retinue of baliffs, thugs and bully-boys, and evicts you into the street on the stroke of midnight, so that you start the New Year in the right spirit and frame of mind.
-- 8th of 7, Dec 05 2018

Dark Morris https://wiki.lspace...diawiki/Dark_Morris
Even less attractive than regular Morris dancing, which isn't easy. [8th of 7, Dec 09 2018]

I see you are full of the festering spirit.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 05 2018


Cheery little read. Now I'm in the spirit to go throw sticks and coal at little helpless stray dogs for some reason.
-- blissmiss, Dec 05 2018


Don't be cruel. Throw them at little helpless stray cats instead.
-- 8th of 7, Dec 05 2018


I suggest that we all club together and get [8th] a 25ft-tall fibreglass, fake-snow-covered illuminated kitten for his Christmas garden. For an extra £175, we can get its base filled with concrete so it doesn't blow away in the wind. Ever.

Failing that, perhaps we could all just get together and club [8th].
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 05 2018


Your delivery of two dozen ten metre tall concrete-filled illuminated fibreglass Christmas moles has just left the BorgCo warehouse.
-- 8th of 7, Dec 05 2018


Thank goodness. I shall distribute them to the poor and needy.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 05 2018


What exact need do they have that a ten metre tall concrete-filled illuminated fibreglass Christmas mole would fill ?
-- 8th of 7, Dec 05 2018


That, Mr.[8th], is *precisely* why we half-bake.

<edit> - and a moley moley Christmas to you, as well.
-- lurch, Dec 05 2018


//What exact need do they have that a ten metre tall concrete-filled illuminated fibreglass Christmas mole would fill ?// You've never been in Norfolk after dark, have you?

"Do you like Dickens?"
"I dunno. Never been to one."
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 05 2018


// You've never been in Norfolk after dark, have you? //

No, never, absolutely not. <shudder/>
-- 8th of 7, Dec 05 2018


This sounds much preferable to spending the requisite time with my stepfather's family. Where do I sign?
-- RayfordSteele, Dec 05 2018


"Sign" ? You can write ?

Hmmm ... we suggest you just make an "X" or leave a thumbprint; if you write your name, it will mark you out as a dangerous intellectual, someone who is prone to sedition and revolutionary thoughts, such as "Maybe poor people should have some sort of legal rights" ?
-- 8th of 7, Dec 06 2018


[RayfordSteele], Though some in his family have died off, let's just say Christmas with Stepdaddy and them was not ever amidst one of my favorite things. I gotcha.
-- blissmiss, Dec 06 2018


Not really. If I talk this thing interprets my words into funny squiggles. Sometimes I pick a crayon up and try to make them too.
-- RayfordSteele, Dec 07 2018


// Sometimes I pick a crayon up //

Oh, they won't let you have sharp objects any more either ? That's harsh ... we feel your pain.
-- 8th of 7, Dec 08 2018


Are you sure that's not just indigestion?
-- pertinax, Dec 09 2018


As a matter of fact, I shall be in Norfolk after dark this Christmas. Sheringham, to be precise. Even in daylight, there's some risk of Morris Dancing.
-- pertinax, Dec 09 2018


Be afraid... be very afraid. Given the time of year, they might perform the Dark Morris <link>, and you never know who - or what - might be watching ...
-- 8th of 7, Dec 09 2018



random, halfbakery