Jaspistos
No place to hide
In Competition No. 2475 you were invited to provide entries from the diary of someone trying to escape from the Christmas season — and failing
In Competition No. 2475 you were invited to provide entries from the diary of someone trying to escape from the Christmas season — and failing.
Maybe you were all suffering from pre-Christmas exhaustion, maybe it was an unsuitable comp, or maybe I was in an atrabilious mood, but the entries were so substandard that, to cries of ‘Have a heart, ref!’, I rule that there are only three prizewinners this week. They are printed below, earning £30 each, D.A. Prince taking the bonus fiver.
To fill in the extra space in a seasonable manner I append an entry from Mr Pooter’s ‘Diary’, followed by the last paragraph of Max Beerbohm’s parody of Chesterton, ‘Some Damnable Errors about Christmas’.
21 December: Damned mobile! Switched on for just five minutes to check cricket scores and Celia rings, begging me to drop in for ‘Chrissie drinkies’. Try not to sound smug, telling her I’m on a camel trek in Sahara. Get gratifying ‘Ohmigod!’
23 December: 120 degrees today, but still covered ten miles of sand. Just sand. No tinsel jingles, no electrically flashing icicles. Just Factor 50, sheeps’ eye stew, and discussion of Berber poetry.
24 December: Camel sores responding to sheep fat. Sheeps’ eyes somewhat laxative. Robes now sand-blown and gritty — far from cheap suits and office parties. Real life. Omar tells me about creation myths, and we discuss the ghazal.
25 December: Damn. Omar wakes me with flaming Christmas pudding, decorated with sheep’s eye, and whole group sing ‘While Shepherds Watched’ off-key, with gusto; they’ve learned on internet this is time for gifts. Dread to think what’s in their crackers.
D.A. Prince
20 December: Called police anonymously denouncing self as drunken red-coated driver. No response. Can’t even get flashed for speeding without licence or lights — sleigh flies too high. Might get reindeer impounded by cruelty to animals shower.
22 December: No luck with RSPCA — apparently overtime one night annually doesn’t count as cruelty. Claimed I’d lost red suit, but Maria from that Sound of Music lot ran up a new one from old curtains. Mailbag bulging with mis-spelt letters from spoilt, greedy children.
24 December: Lost voice, can’t do the ‘Ho Ho’ thing, but those pesky dwarves have been practising and got it off to a T. Hoped to cast vote for ‘Winterval’, go green and sleep through the whole shindig, but my damned reindeer, Rudolph and co., are snuffling at the door, keen to be fed and take off. Have to resign myself to more sherry, mince pies and sooty chimneys.
Shirley Curran
18 December: Mrs Wilson next door invites me to her daughter’s Nativity play on Wednesday (‘She’s playing Mary, you know!’). Decide to have ’flu on Wednesday.
21 December: Because I didn’t turn up yesterday, ‘Mary’ comes round to give me my own private performance. Stifled yawns mistaken for excessive emotion.
22 December: Office party. Enforced ‘Christmas spirit’ too embarrassing, so spend quiet evening in. Salvation army ruin end of Casablanca by playing ‘Silent Night’ right outside my window. Go out and buy earplugs.
23 December: Miss my flight to Antarctica because don’t hear alarm going off. Discover I’ve left earplugs in.
25 December: Quiet at last! Everybody indoors, shops shut, no piped carols — decide to venture out for a solitary walk. Mrs Wilson sees me pass and drags me in (‘Can’t have you spending Christmas alone!’). Now my head aches, I feel sick and I think I really have got ’flu.
Virginia Price Evans
December 19. The annual invitation came to spend Christmas with Carrie’s mother — the usual family festive gathering to which we always look forward. Lupin declined to go. I was astounded, and expressed my surprise and disgust. Lupin then obliged us with the following Radical speech. ‘I hate a family gathering at Christmas. What does it mean? Why, someone says: “Ah! We miss poor Uncle James, who was here last year” and we all begin to snivel. Someone else says: “It’s two years since poor Aunt Liz used to sit in that corner.” Then we all begin to snivel again. Then another gloomy relation says: “Ah! I wonder whose turn it will be next?” Then we all snivel again and proceed to eat and drink too much; and they don’t discover until I get up that we have been seated thirteen at dinner.’
I look for the time when we shall wish one another a Merry Christmas every morning; when roast turkey and plum-pudding shall be the staple of our daily dinner, and the holly shall never be taken down from the walls, and every one will always be kissing every one else under the mistletoe. And what is right as regards Christmas is right as regards all other so-called anniversaries. The time will come when we shall dance round the Maypole every morning before breakfast — a meal at which hot-cross buns will be a standing dish — and shall make April fools of one another every day before noon. The profound significance of All Fools’ Day — the glorious lesson that we are all fools — is too apt at present to be lost. Nor is justice done to the sublime symbolism of Shrove Tuesday — the day on which all sins are shriven. Every day pancakes shall be eaten either before or after the plum-pudding. They shall be eaten slowly and sacramentally. They shall be fried over fires tended and kept for ever bright by Vestals. They shall be tossed to the stars.
No. 2478: Bouts rimés