Little white lies can’t hurt, right?

LYING is going on everywhere.

There are politicians denying lockdown parties, there is tractor porn pandemonium and nonsense about deliberate Fatal Attractionstyle flashing.

There are the mentalists in the Kremlin’s alternative universe telling us that Russia is the only nonnazi state in Europe. Aye, and that they’re the only country that hasn’t invaded Ukraine.

There is the tin-foil hat brigade who claim that Covid jabs contain micro-chips while others believe the US election was stolen.

Why are we surprised? Why are we shocked? We all lie. We do it all day every day. Small ones to protect loved a one’s feelings or big Goebbels-type propaganda ones on a work’s night out.

These work-related porkies are particularly enjoyable, especially the ones we weave after the boss has given us (using army terminology) ‘an interview without coffee.’

When we leave the office with the gaffer’s unhinged rant ringing in our ears, we feel angry we just took it like a mumbling, stuttering fool.

Then the miracle – if it can be called as much – happens. All the things we should have said suddenly pop into our little heads with crystal clarity. The only problem? It’s typically 20 minutes too late.

It gets better, though. We begin to lie and connive. Soon, we are spindoctoring like a post-barnard Castle Dominic Cummings.

So we meet our mates at the water cooler and they ask us how the meeting with Godzilla went?

That’s when part two of the barefaced bulls***ting process kicks in as things that we wished we had said to our plonker of a boss now magically become what was actually said!

It usually goes something like “I told the him that he and his pet monkey boy from head office should get their knee and elbow pads out and prepare to do some serious grovelling to yours truly – or I’m off!”

This fairy story is then repeated all day with such conviction, that by knocking-off time you genuinely believe it yourself. Your inner Boris Johnson is now cavorting around inside your head like it’s a Downing Street ‘work event’ with booze, nibbles and a sing-song.

Anybody who questions your version of events is met with genuine hurt and scorn. The biggest lies are to ourselves.

We cling on to these little fictions, whether they be kidding ourselves when we squeeze into clothes three sizes too small and two decades too late or convincing ourselves that not scanning the 15p carrier bag on the self-serve check-out is being dishonest. Lies can keep us safe.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the miserable truth would destroy things of beauty, such as Fenwick’s Christmas window. If children had to endure the sight of what’s really going on, what would they see?

A bunch of mechanical elves dressed as Chinese prisoners making their presents in sweatshops? Santa in a pimped-up Vauxhall Corsa burning off the reindeer at the lights on St James’ Boulevard?

Maybe a member of the repressed SLG (story-land giant) community bringing a High Court claim against Jack and his mother for criminal damage to a beanstalk, egg theft and ‘size-ist’ hate crime discrimination?

No, thank you. I would rather stick to the porkies to be honest.