Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been fixated of late. If you know your Maximum Leader personally he’s probably mentioned to you that he wants to go to Venice for Christmas.

Not Venice Beach California.

The Venice. Veniza. La Serenissima. Queen of the Adriatic.

Yes… He even risked the glower of Mrs Villain by announcing at the dinner table one night that he would go by himself if need be.

This fixation has been percolating in your Maximum Leader’s brain for some time. At some point early this year he read this piece in the Guardian entitled “Silent Night in St Mark’s” Two paragraphs of the piece are stuck in your Maximum Leader’s mind. Here they are:

It’s odd that so few tourists go to Venice for Christmas. But their absence - and with them the proprietors of a thousand souvenir stalls - is the winter visitor’s gain. It’s not that you have the place to yourself, but with a layer of tourist kitsch removed, you feel the Venetians are reclaiming their city. Neighbourhoods and markets seem more authentic, and the people standing next to you in the bars and bakeries are locals. The city’s population is less than half what it is during August high season, and as you stroll along empty quays or across deserted squares you savour the essence of Venice, with all of its extravagant architecture laid bare.

…

Warm dress is essential on Christmas Eve, too. It isn’t possible that the entire population of Venice packs into St Mark’s Basilica for midnight mass, but it feels that way. With the great doors open onto the square, the air is icy. The gold-lined basilica feels like the inside of a giant Fabergé egg. A thousand candles find a million reflections in the Byzantine mosaics, a simulacrum of the heavens. Cumuli of incense curl upwards.

Your Maximum Leader would do this in an instant if the circumstances would allow…

But, they do not allow…

So this remains a fixation in his mind…

Carry on.