Christmas on the cards: Short story by Deric Longden
Dec 24 2008 by Yvette Smith, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
He thought about it once again, even longer and harder than before.
“They were just buggering about,” he said. “The lot of ‘em.”
I can’t think of a more pleasant way of spending a winter’s afternoon than searching for a band of angels who were just buggering about. It’s my idea of heaven, but they proved to be elusive little devils.
I came across one who had terminal acne. He was doing a loop the loop high above the stable in Bethlehem and would have been well advised not to give up his day job. And we found several others who were loitering about without any particular intent. In fact angels never seem to do much of anything at all. You never see an angel putting in a damp course or doing a bit of painting and decorating. They might fit in the odd gig here and there, a little light busking perhaps, or maybe play a few requests on the harp, but that’s about as far as it seems to go.
I would hate to be an angel when I die. I would be bored to death – it’s bad enough being one here, on earth.
Christmas for the past year or so has brought with it a rising tide of round robins from people we hardly know, a grim crop of faintly photocopied letters to tell us that little Abigail now has her own pony.
Since I have never laid eyes on this kid, the fact that she has also passed her eleven-plus with flying colours hardly has me jumping up and down in delight.
That lovely warm feeling that always comes trotting along in the wake of a personal letter is completely missing – I’m just one of the crowd. British Gas write to me in much the same way.
And, of course, the parents have to be so even-handed. Abigail passed her eleven-plus and now has her own pony, and then we learn that the eldest son, Grenville, has decided to go backpacking in Peru for a year, before he goes up to Oxford. They all seem to float through life on a cloud of self-fulfilment, and just as I am beginning to resent the mere existence of this bloody family – the wife has taken a part-time job in publishing and the husband has opened yet another branch office, this time in Bratislavia – they come to that point in the letter where they have to tell us about their little Norman.
Poor little Norman. He seems to have been left behind in this yuppy rush of life. After much soul-searching we hear that he appears to be rather good with his hands and that he wants to work with animals when he grows up. And right there and then I want to adopt him; sight unseen. I have a feeling that if we leave Norman where he is, he’s going to spend the rest of his life mucking out after Abigail’s pony.
So this year Aileen decided to write a spoof letter. It would be a chronicle of our own exciting life, packed with all the intimate details of our glamorous world. She remembered one of the opening paragraphs.
“So much has happened this year. In the January sales Deric and I bought each other a set of thermal underwear at a bargain price, and in February we were awfully glad we’d had such foresight. And one of the children rang up.”
I recalled another.
“And it seems that our social life is looking up. Deric has been invited to join the Shell Smartcard set, and the very next day the Readers’ Digest wrote to inform us that, out of millions, we had been selected to go through to the second round of their Grand Prize Draw! Who knows where this might lead?
“April was a bit of an anxious time. I had a disagreeable filling at the dentist’s on the Tuesday and then the following morning Deric came home with a broken leg. I told him to apologise and made him take it back.
“Owing to our incredibly hectic social whirl we’ve had to cut down drastically on our Christmas card list this year. However, due to some kind of administrative oversight you seem to have slipped through the net.”
We had a nice long cuddle and then settled down to sleep. Aileen turned over and curved herself down the length of my back, winding her fingers round both of the hairs on my chest. As I sighed I remembered another passage from the letter.
“Sex occurred twice this year, on our respective birthdays. We did consider indulging once again over the Christmas period, but as Tigger had a bad dose of flu at the time it seemed inappropriate. Anyway, you can have too much of a good thing.”
I turned over to face Aileen and whispered in her ear, “Merry Christmas, love.”
Story taken from Deric’s book Enough To Make A Cat Laugh, published in paperback by Corgi at £6.99
