Between Two Years

We're in that strange time of the year again, becalmed between Christmas and New Year, watching the sands of time run out for the old year.  Of course, it is still Christmas, (which is, after all, meant to have twelve days, although we are usually short-changed these days), although the relentless focus upon Christmas Day itself nowadays makes the days afterwards seem like an anti-climax.  But I like this time of year, with its long lazy afternoons spent on the sofa (I spent part of today watching a Soviet-made Sherlock Holmes film).  It's an awkward time for the news media as well - newspapers fill their supplements full of trivia or end of year reviews to cover up the lack of news and, more significantly, their lack of staff over the festive period.  Even if there are big stories, the public is too preoccupied with celebrating Christmas to read about them.  Besides, withe the year rapidly drawing to a close, nobody wants to start anything new - we've all been conditioned to believe that New Year is the time for that. 

So, even intriguing sounding news stories go unremarked upon.  Only this morning I was lying in bed listening to the radio when I learned that a British expedition's attempts to drill down to a  frozen antarctic laked buried beneath three kilometres of ice, has been abandoned for technical reasons.  What better time to bury a story like this, eh?  Bearing in mind that the lake has been undisturbed for aeons, one has to wonder whether there's more to the story than this.  Maybe the scientists have actually penetrated the ice all the way down to the lake and discovered something that they want to keep secret.  A crashed flying saucer, perhaps?  Or a frozen prehistoric behemoth, like Godzilla, which they are worried might thaw out and destroy the world's cities?  Or could it be that they've discovered a whole lost world down there, populated by prehistoric creatures?  OK, the reality is most probably none of the above.  But even if it was, at this time of year I fear that the media would be unlikely to report it.