Stories and Articles

'Twasn't the night before Christmas ...

by Ean Lawrence

It was the night before Christmas. All was quiet in the house and my brother and I were eagerly awaiting the annual visit of the rosy cheeked benefactor. Now, wait a minute. It can’t have been the night before Christmas because the night before Christmas was the night when some of Great Uncle Joe’s homemade Christmas crackers - thankfully, being stored in the cellar - spontaneously exploded and roused us, the inmates of Number 24, Balaclava Street, out of our yuletide reveries.

In one version of his wartime service, Great Uncle Joe had been seconded to a unit of the Bomb Disposal Squad. Over the years, we, the latest generation of Smiths, had taken Great Uncle Joe’s stories with a pinch of salt; indeed, we took them with a couple of pinches. Surely, we thought, someone who had been an operative in the BDS was supposed to prevent things from exploding. Unstable Christmas crackers that spontaneously exploded weren’t, where Great Uncle Joe was involved, the only things that had been known to go off with a pop. Demijohns that contained home-brewed wine and beer had been known, during the fermentation process, to blow their stoppers out; sometimes, more excitingly, the glass walls of the containers in which the process of transformation was taking place would shatter and the red, white and amber liquids would wash over the floor and leave rebuking stains, and shards of glass would deck the livid surface with worthless jewels.

Dad hesitantly descended the steps that led to the dank chamber under the house, lighting his way with a candle. Given the loudness of the report that had enlivened us and reverberated throughout the house, he was surprised - and not a little relieved - to find little actual damage had resulted from the explosion: the mushrooms that were being cultivated in a collection of old beer crates were untouched; the stalks of potentially prize-winning rhubarb that creaked in their half barrels of Dad’s special compost mixture were intact; and Grandma’s sealed biscuit tins which contained the back-up Christmas cakes that dated back to the end of wartime rationing, that suggested an amateur geologist’s collection of core samples, were undisturbed. To compare Grandma’s Christmas cakes with rock samples might seem a trifle disrespectful, but it was, nevertheless, an apposite comparison: the cakes had emerged from the oven hard and heavy, and with each year that passed, sealed within their metal containers, we supposed that they were becoming harder and heavier. We wouldn’t be surprised one day to learn that the fossilized remains of some extinct animal had been found in the matrices, should anyone, that is, be brave enough to open one of the tins and chip away at its contents.

So, attentive reader, if it wasn’t the night before Christmas, it must have been the night before the night before Christmas. Yes. It was the night before the night before Christmas. All was quiet in the house and my brother and I were speculating whether or not Santa Claus ever got fed up sitting in a sleigh behind originally eight, later nine reindeer, with reindeer, as is well known, being martyrs to… well… let’s not be coy about it… flatulence, which is the unavoidable side-effect of munching, almost exclusively during the winter, on a diet of lichen. Still, it was only one night in the year; and reindeer pulling Santa in a sleigh did make a charming image on a Christmas card or picked out in lights skidding across a rooftop.

No, no, no! It can’t have been the night before the night before Christmas because the night before the night before Christmas was the night when two turkeys appeared at our back door seeking refuge and succour. A pitiable sight they made standing on the doorstep with bedraggled feathers, dull eyes and flaccid wattles.

It was another boast of our great uncle that he was – briefly - attached to a cadre of the French Resistance in north-western France. Again, our observations of our great uncle’s life were at odds with these tales of daring-do: he was notoriously bad at keeping a secret, any secret: there was the time when he revealed what our Dad’s long-studied system was for filling in his football pools coupon; Great Uncle Joe had disclosed what the code was for the burglar alarm, not once but three times; and the most serious offence to date was when he told our Mum that our Dad had a passion – a passion, I should quickly add, that, as far as we could ascertain, was unrequited - for Gina Lollobrigida – or was it Sophia Loren?

An old friend of our great uncle, who had re-established contact through a exploratory personal ad in the pages of the Liberation Times, had persuaded him to join an organization that arranged new identities and safe passages out of the country for turkeys who wished to escape the presumed fate of turkeys at this time of the year, particularly in this part of the country, the broad, flat expanses of Norfolk.

Different people brought different skills to this end: there were those who were expert in producing false documents; others were skilled in making clothes that looked convincing on a large, ungainly bird; and still others who were adept at makeup, disguise and camouflage. Perhaps the worst part of the preparation for transit was the membership of Weight Watchers. The pounds that had been so easily added in the preceding weeks were a devil to shed. Quite what our great uncle brought to this endeavour - someone who was prone to blowing things up and carelessly dropping secrets wherever he went - we could only surmise. After much discussion, we concluded that it must be his former connections in the armed forces and on continental Europe that the organization valued as useful assets.

One of the more hazardous parts of the process, when an escaping turkey was vulnerable to exposure, was passing through passport control at an airport. A tried and tested trick – never mind that it had a grey beard and had lost most of its teeth - of getting around this obstacle was to create a diversion. Now, dear reader, don’t be alarmed and think that the diversion involved something explosive; although our great uncle was sometimes lackadaisical, he wasn’t stupid.

One of the favourite means of distraction was for two female operatives to dress in the clothes of the early Edwardian period and, by wearing them as hats, smuggle a brace of pheasants into the airport. These four dedicated members of the organization would be followed by a camera crew to create the impression that some scene or other from a costume drama (after all, what self-respecting costume drama doesn’t have a few glaring anachronisms) for transmission on some obscure television channel was being filmed. On a signal from our great uncle, the pheasants would come to life and flap around the concourse of the airport; and in the ensuing uproar the turkey would take its opportunity to slip through unnoticed. Of course, not every attempt ended happily. Sometimes, as a result of fog or a sudden snow storm, the plane on which the turkey was travelling was diverted to a destination other than the intended one. Sadly, a turkey is not a great improviser, is not the quickest of thinkers on its feet. When asked a question by an official in an accent it doesn’t readily comprehend, a turkey panics and starts to gobble; and then the game is up. Fortunately for the organization and our great uncle, a turkey can never remember how it got to where it arrived.

So, patient reader, if it wasn’t the night before Christmas, and it wasn’t the night before the night before Christmas, then it must have been the night before the night before the night before Christmas. Yes. It was definitely the night before the night before the night before Christmas. All was still in the house until my indignation breached the walls of my self-control and I told my brother that it should have been my turn to have opened the window on the Advent calendar. He was adamant that it had been his turn to open the window on the calendar on the night before the night before the night before Christmas, maintaining that the even days were his and the odd days were mine. Just as the dispute was beginning to generate some heat, a loud bang was heard from the direction of the outside lavatory. My brother and I looked at each other. As synchronized smiles appeared on our faces, we both knew what the other was thinking. Where was Great Uncle Joe?