Batman Smells

Everywhere I go I hear ‘Jingle Bells’ and can't help but sing along with the alternative lyrics. It’s playing in one shop after another, the Salvation Army brass band in the station are playing it, and I even hear it on the street as a mother sings it to her small child in a pushchair. She sings the verse in a thin voice filled with love, and the small boy sings the choruses, slowly, deliberately and rather off key. As he does so, he scratches his forehead with a mitten-clad hand and his woolly hat wobbles.