I began writing a short story about Vikings last year, which took a totally unexpected turning and ended up as a different story that I had not foreseen at all.
But what was left over, also unexpectedly, became this poem.
It is going to be a busy couple of weeks, now, so I probably won’t be able to post or reply to comments as much as I’d like, but I’ll check in whenever I can.
All the best to you all!
Bob phoned me up.
‘Gina’s gone off on holiday and left me to look after Duncan.’ Duncan is not their pet, although you might assume that from the way he said it, but their son. Now, when I heard that, several questions popped up in my mind. Namely, why had Gina gone off without Bob? Why had she left Duncan with Bob? But mainly, how on earth was Bob going to survive a week looking after himself and Duncan?
Some celeriac. Very nice but totally irrelevant.
There are husbands who are less capable than Bob, but there are not many of them. At least, I think there are.
‘That’s fine, Bob,’ I said, my voice oozing false conviction. ‘You two can have a great time bonding over boy things.’
‘Bonding?’ he wailed. ‘He’s already said he wants me to take him to the football! And he’s hungry!’
Well, Bob does not like football. Basically, he does not understand football. But rather than pursue that line at that point, I said ‘Uh, hungry? When did Gina go?’
‘Monday morning.’ It was now Wednesday.
‘Monday?’ I asked, in genuine surprise. ‘What have you been eating?’
‘Well, we found enough stuff in the larder for lunch – you know, bread and stuff – and we ordered pizzas for supper. I had cereal this morning for breakfast, Duncan wouldn’t eat anything.’
‘Why not? What’s wrong with toast?’ There was a brief silence.
‘Well, actually, the toaster…um…you know…caught fire.’
‘Oh.’ A thought struck me. ‘And yesterday?’
‘Er, cereal, and, er, sandwiches…’
‘And supper?’
‘Oh, we both fancied pizza again, you know. Really fancied it. Um, they’re very good, those ones…’
‘Bob…’
‘Yes?’
‘Would you like one of us to go shopping with you?’
In the end, we both went round. The kitchen looked as though it belonged in a student squat. The draining board was temporary home to four pizza boxes, several bowls and plates and a host of dirty knives, forks and spoons. There were also three pieces of burnt toast and two pieces of very burnt toast.
The toaster was sticking out of the top of the bin, and the air was perfumed with the delicate scent of smoke.
There was no sign of Duncan.
For some reason, my wife never really seems to have taken to Bob. She narrowed her eyes and fixed him with what I can only describe as displeasure, and suggested that if he would like any help at all with the bloody shopping list, then he might clear up his bloody kitchen immediately, a tactic that actually proved most effective.
He had finished that, and the shopping list had been compiled (No, you can’t possibly live on pizza for a week!), when Duncan walked into the kitchen.
‘Oh, hi!’ he said to us, in a friendly, distracted way, before looking at Bob. Duncan is a perfectly affable fifteen year old, who unfortunately takes more after his father than his mother. He had an instruction book in his hand.
‘I’ve got it Dad, look!’ he said, pointing to the open page. ‘You can do toast under the grill – it’s that thing at the top. I’ve seen Mum using it for something or other – cheese on toast, I think.’
‘Well done!’ said Bob. ‘How does it work?’
‘Um…’ Duncan stared at the page for a moment, turned it over and looked at the other side, and then turned back. ‘Not sure. You’d better take a look.’
We slipped silently out of the house while they studied the booklet.
That week, Bob seemed to drop by our house an unusual amount, generally just for a chat – just to pass the time of day – but there was always an odd question somewhere in the conversation.
‘Where has Gina gone, Bob?’
‘She’s staying in Oxford. Wants to see lots of the churches around there, apparently.’
‘Pity about the weather.’ Outside it was bucketing down. ‘The forecast is for more of this all week.’
‘I know. I’m surprised she didn’t take her waterproofs. They’re still hanging up under the stairs.’
‘Perhaps she forgot.’
‘I expect so. Er, if you were Gina, where would you put spare batteries?’
The day before Gina was due to return, Bob decided to clear up the house. To be fair to him, we didn’t prompt him this time. I think it might have had a little more to do with fear of what Gina might say when she returned to something that resembled a municipal rubbish tip under her own roof. But it all seemed to go well and when he nervously asked us to have a look, clearly worried he might have missed something, we were surprised to see the house had even been vacuumed.
‘That was Duncan.’ The boy went up in my estimation.
‘The only thing that didn’t go right was the washing,’ Bob said reluctantly.
‘In what way?’
‘Well, I put the wash on (he seemed proud of having mastered the terminology), but something went wrong.’ There was a washing basket in the corner, the floor was covered in water, and the clothes it contained were clearly still soaking wet. My wife picked out a shirt and held it up.
Not only was it still dripping with water, but appeared to be for a small child.
‘How did you manage that? Those clothes are completely ruined!’ He looked hurt.
‘Don’t blame me, it was the damned washing machine! I left it on whatever setting it was that Gina last used, put the clothes and a washing tablet inside, and just switched it on.’ He pointed at the offending appliance.
‘Even I know that’s the dishwasher, Bob.’ I said. Inexplicably, he looked relieved.
‘Oh, that’s okay, then. I was worried it might have been on the wrong setting.’
Gina came back in the evening. Despite the week of heavy rain, it must be said that she had somehow managed to pick up a most impressive suntan.
I’ve been hiding from the internet.
No, I didn’t go away, unfortunately, although a holiday was what I both have been and am still craving. I made a rash promise some weeks ago to put up a Facebook Author page, to do a minor relaunch of my novel, and to serialise a bawdy Elizabethan detective story. Really, I should know myself better than that.
I think it was the short story that finally broke me.
Writing, for me, is a pleasure, comparable to painting. It is all about crafting the finished product, taking my time and eventually producing the best I can. When all goes well, the process is immensely satisfying from beginning to end.
Within that process, of course, there are times of writer’s block, false starts and finishes, wrong turnings, and many other things to go wrong. And the editing can be an infuriating process. But overall, there needs to be a flow.
Making Friends with the Crocodile worked for me at the length it was (45,000 words), since I wrote it almost as a stream of consciousness as the story unfolded in my mind. It came out in a rush partly because of its importance to me, and partly because I found I could visualise the characters, the story and the setting clearly. Once I had reached the end, I knew that was the end.
Obviously, many stories take a lot more coaxing to get down on paper. I’ve struggled with ones that need to be forced, certainly in places, partly because at that point they are not ‘me’ at the heart of them; I have lost that flow. But sometimes because of the length.
One reason I stopped entering short story competitions is I write a lot of long short stories. I am perfectly aware of the dictum that whatever you write can be edited down to the required length and that, indeed, they should be edited down.
But I also strongly believe that when a story presents itself to be written, that story has an internal length that needs to be respected, even after editing. Some require a few hundred words, some a lot more. But to attempt to turn Making Friends with the Crocodile into a 120,000 word novel or a 5.000 word short story, I am sure would have meant a lesser read. It would have been padded out for the sake of it, or stripped down to bare bones that would have meant that the characters could not have been drawn as strongly as I wanted them to be, and therefore encouraged less empathy from the reader.
Where is all this leading?
I began the short story / serial. It was working quite well, and I had a good few chuckles to myself as I was writing it and then, suddenly, it was almost 10,000 words long and nowhere near finished.
Oh dear.
So I attempted to cram and trim and edit and get it down to a suitable length for serialisation, but I was not happy with the result. Oh no. And I had one of my minor panic-I-can’t-cope-stress attacks and decided the only way to deal with it was to hide.
So, I’m not going to serialise it after all. I will finish it, but the attempt to condense it into a few instalments simply wasn’t working, and what I ended up with felt completely wrong. I will return to it at some point in the future, and finish it as the novella that it clearly is.
There is another strand to all this:
I made the Facebook Author page. That was the easy bit, and I’ll show you where it is next time. And I put together the re-launch promotion piece by the simple expedient of gathering together extracts from lots of the kind reviews the book has had.
But I am in a state of recurring panic, once again, over this huge need to self-promote to sell books. Of course, we all want to, but we are forever urged to use this or that platform, accept this or that offer, etc. Now, we are told that we ‘must’ have a YouTube channel. Really? And a presence on all sorts of social media. Are we not ‘serious’ writers if we are not prepared to move heaven and earth to sell a couple of extra books? That we should ‘invest’ a hundred or five hundred dollars here and there to advertise ourselves?
I have sold a few, and what is really important to me is the tremendous feedback that I’ve had.
Blowing my own trumpet is anathema to me, as I have written in the past. I just can’t do the selling and marketing the way that seems to be presented as essential. It’s an aspect of life that I hate, and a reason I have never gone into ‘business’. Everything around the promotion and marketing just seems relentless and is something that I cannot cope with.
Fortunately, I am not interested in fame. The idea frightens me.
And I really struggle with social media. I have had two goes at being on Facebook, and cope with it at the moment by not going on it very much. I spent ages trying to see the use of Linkedin, and have solved that one by closing my account last week. I really see no use for it.
And I am not doing Twatter.
So here I am back on WordPress, which is a platform I do enjoy. I’ll dip in and out of it a bit over the next few weeks or months, I suspect, since I still feel a bit panicky, but I will be there.
Thank you for your patience!
What is it about the internet and kittens, for goodness’ sake? There are far too many pictures of them.
Okay, that’s too provocative. Let’s move on.
She Who Dislikes Being Referred To This Way has been away for a few days. I had presumed that I would sleep better without the snoring, and the duvet being constantly pulled off me, but I was wrong.
For some reason, I’ve not slept particularly well at all.
Perhaps it was the wild parties I’ve no idea why not.
I had intended to begin a painting, maybe even get it finished, but although I carefully planned said painting, even finding a few resource pictures to use, once I sat down in front of the paper, it just refused to happen. My mind went completely blank and my enthusiasm kicked the wall sulkily for a few moments and then ran out of the house sobbing.
Oh well, back to the writing.
I did have a few ideas for short stories and, because I know how to use my time both productively and wisely, immediately started writing two of them, as well as continuing with both the novels I’m writing. That’s what you’re meant to do, right? Isn’t it?
Oh, and a poem.
And, of course, I need to do research for all the various Tales In Process. Isn’t it amazing what a little bit of research throws up?
Here are just a couple of little snippets, a few gobbets of curiosity, that I have come across recently while researching topics in medieval Persia and India, for use in my #1 Novel In Progress, The Assassin’s Garden.
All of the prostitutes in Fatephur Sikri, India, during the short time that it was Akhbar’s capital, were kept in an area just outside the city called ‘The Devil’s Quarter’.
You do get sidetracked, of course, but perhaps that will be an integral part of the plot? Possible spoiler alert?
I wouldn’t like to say.
And at one point, there is a long journey undertaken in my book, by caravan.
‘Caravan’ is a Persian word, I discover. That seems appropriate. In some parts of Persia they would travel by day and rest by night.
In others, the reverse was true. Something to do with the temperature, I expect.
In the nineteenth century, there were caravans that existed just to transfer corpses to holy cities for burial. These disappeared in the early twentieth century, largely due to better understanding of how diseases spread!
And, obviously, I mean the caravans that are chock full of camels and traders and an ill-assorted collection of ne’er-do-wells, not the wretched giant metal boxes blocking ninety percent of our roads as soon as the weather shows even the faintest promise of a few hours of sunshine.
But enough of caravans, for now, I’ve got some words to beat into shape.
Oh, and there are still people who would prefer pictures of kittens?
It is the first of March, today.
Meteorologically, it is the first day of spring. So, that virtually guarantees what weather we will have today; the sky is overcast and grey, there is a bitterly chill wind blowing and a spiteful, thin drizzle.
Spring! Oh, humour!
Arf!
Admittedly, the astronomical calendar tells us spring doesn’t arrive until around the 20th March, so winter still has cate blanchett to do whatever it will.
So that’s fine; it sort of reflects my mood at the moment, anyway. But at least going out for a walk always lifts my mood a little, and today is no exception. I’ve been working on my new novel quite intensely for a while, and I suddenly need to step back from it for a week or two.
Come up for air, as it were.
Not this one!
And so I go for a walk in the miserably wintery springy weather. Ten minutes or so through the streets brings me to the common – a wooded area on the edge of the town which, on good days, is a pleasant enough place to walk, even if it doesn’t have any convenient mountains or long distance trails.
On bad days, though, it is full of dog walkers.
That sounds a bit mean, you may say. And, okay, you’re right. It is. But in my defence, when I say full of dog walkers (and dogs), I mean full!
This one!
It is not unusual to be surrounded by dozens of dogs running madly around, the air filled with strident shouts of ‘Gawain! Guinevere! Come here at once!’ ‘Will you come here!’ ‘Put that down!’ ‘Keep still and he won’t hurt you!’ and then some wretched little tyke suddenly tugging at your trouser leg with a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, to be followed by another shout of ‘Keep still, I said!’ from a voice that could etch glass.
But not today, fortunately.
And having had my walk, I can sort out a couple of other things on my writing list.
Once I got back, I edited a short story I promised for a project for our writing group. Job done – tick.
Next, I’ll begin the edit of a very long short story that has been hanging around for ages. So long, in fact, that I mentioned it in the ‘My Writing’ section on this blog when I first set it up, a year and a half ago. Tut. It’ll be good to get that finished, anyway. It’s my first attempt at a traditional murder mystery, and I rather got lost in my own convolutions.
If I get it to the point where I’m happy with it, I might put it out as an e-book, just to see what people think of it.
Ahem…if anyone buys it, of course.
And, as a bonus, I had an idea for another short story while I was out walking, so hooray!
Now to barricade the door against all the angry dog walkers.
In today’s alternative ‘Alice in Wonderland: ‘When I use a word,’ Trumpty Numpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less’.
Lewis Carroll obviously saw this fellow coming.
Just thought I’d share that with you. Anyway, back to the task in hand. After two ridiculously hectic weeks, I now have to do my best to catch up with everything. Onward!
***
I don’t have a business brain.
I look at my clutter of short stories and paintings, my carvings and photographs and think ‘I should be able to at least make a bit of a living out of all of these.’
But I don’t. And then I wonder ‘how on earth I am going to do it?’ and go ‘aaargh!’ and run off into the distance.
It really doesn’t help.
And so, if I had to have made a New Year’s Resolution this year, it would have been to sort all this out. I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean I can ignore it for any longer.
To begin with, then, how about attracting new blog followers?
Dressed in a loincloth and brandishing a spear (not a sight that sensitive readers should try to picture in their minds), I go charging out onto the lightly wooded WordPress plains, hunting new blog followers.
‘Aha, there’s one!’ I think, spotting a potential follower grazing harmlessly beside the River of Inspiration. I sneak up on them, then hurl a ‘follow’ at them, hoping that they will respond in kind.
Er, no.
It’s just not me, unfortunately. As I have mentioned in the past, I find it incredibly difficult to blow my own trumpet. And I will not ‘follow’ someone just for the sake of getting a ‘follow’ back. I do understand that anti-social media make up the platforms I have to work with, but for some reason I have not yet got my head around using them properly. So for blogs, I shall carry on as I always have. I don’t hunt for followers, I let them find me. Then if they follow me, it is presumably because they like what I’m writing.
Of course, they might simply be after a follow in return, but that won’t happen unless I like what their site does.
I do need to be more professional, though. For a start, then, I have begun to properly update the information on each site I use – such as the ‘Author Profiles’ on Goodreads, Amazon and LinkedIn.
So please feel free to connect with me on those sites – Goodreads LinkedIn. I promise I will put up more book reviews on Goodreads, and try to work out just what the hell LinkedIn is for.
I shall sort out the prices on the paintings and photography websites.
What? Oh, Paintings and Photographs – thanks for asking!
And I need to find new ways to promote my novel Making Friends with the Crocodile.
And then, there is this blog. I must regularly update the information on the ‘About’ page and the ‘My Writings’ page.
Do I need to simply be bolder in my approach to all this? Should I put a ‘shop’ on my blog?
I don’t know. But, learning how to properly use the limited anti-social media I reluctantly and sporadically do take part in (other than blogging), is a priority for me.
But I’m damned if I will ever use Twatter, though.
They could see at once that something was very wrong.
There was no movement from the child in the bed of course, since they were within TimeShift, but the agonised rictus on his face, the distorted jaw and neck, and the twisted body lying half in and half out of the bed, immediately made them freeze and stare in horror.
A snapshot…a cruel statue…tiny hands caught in time, clawing desperately at a heaving chest…bulging eyes…
Henderson actually thought he could hear a terrified scream, somewhere in the air in that suddenly awful room.
‘Shee-it!’ Said Edwards, softly and slowly.
Nobody moved.
After a minute or so, as if by comment consent, they opened the door and slowly went out to the landing, each of them reluctant to leave the child – it felt like they were abandoning him.
‘Try that door.’
Lesley was the nearest. Raising his fist he began to tap gently at the door, then realised what he was doing and shrugged, pushing the door slowly open.
They faced a woman frozen in the act of throwing a dressing gown around her shoulders as she stepped towards them, the dressing gown caught billowing like a hero’s cape, although her face was frightened and staring. Instinctively, they all took a step back.
‘She’s heard him,’ muttered Edwards. ‘She’ll make sure he’s okay.’
But none of them believed it.
‘She’ll get an ambulance, for sure.’
‘But what about all that fucking snow? How will they get through that?’
‘What can we do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Seems blindingly obvious,’ said Edwards, after a couple of moments. ‘We just pop him in the sleigh and take him to hospital ourselves.’ Henderson looked grim.
‘It’s really not that easy, I’m afraid. We’re in TimeShift, but he’s not.’
‘So? Just bung him in the sleigh anyway, and off we go.’
‘No, we can’t. When you’re inside TimeShift you can’t move any other bodies that are outside. It’s impossible. And even if we could, what about his mum? She’d just find him gone.’
‘So to get him to the hospital, we have to do it outside of this TimeShift thing?’
‘I think we’ll have to do everything outside of that. First we need to find out what’s wrong, which means we have to get outside of TimeShift straight away. Talk to his mother….’
‘…won’t she sort of just freak out when she sees us?’
‘We can’t worry about that. We just need to work out how to do it.’
‘Don’t you know, then?’
‘Er, no. When it happened last time, I don’t know how it worked.’
‘Can you call the office and ask them?’
‘Only in real time. But there is one way I can think of. One or both of you will need to stay here, whilst I take the sleigh and come back in…what, one minute? Will that give you long enough to speak to her and find out what’s happening?’ They both looked doubtful.
‘I’m not sure that the sight of us appearing in her house at the dead of night will really help. Ain’t there any way you can stay here? At least she’ll know who you are.’
‘I don’t think so. Neither of you know how to operate it.’
‘No, we don’t. Okay, come back in a minute or two, and we’ll tell you how we’re getting on.’
***
There were four figures on the landing when he returned.
Lesley and Edwards were standing either side of the woman they had seen in the bedroom, who had her hands to her mouth in shock, whilst the fourth was a man in pyjamas who was lying stretched out on the floor A cricket bat was lying a short distance from his outstretched right arm.
‘What the…
‘Sorry, I had to biff ‘im.’
‘Why?’
‘He was attacking us.’
‘Oh, for…
‘But the boy’s having a fit, and needs to get to hospital. And, shit, that was weird.’
‘What was?’
‘The way she stopped moving the moment you appeared.’ Henderson looked at him, and then went back into the child’s bedroom. He was still lying in that awful, contorted, position, but now there was just a hint of dark blue in his lips. He returned to the landing.
‘I think he’s dying. We don’t have much time.’
‘Have you got a plan, then?’
‘Just to get him to hospital as fast as possible. If I go and get that programmed into the SatNav, then we just have to come out of TimeShift and get him on board as quickly as we can and…’
‘Oh, bugger it! It’s obvious!’ shrieked Lesley suddenly.
‘Eh? What are you talking about?’
‘Well, instead of pratting about here, why don’t we just go and get a doctor and bring ‘im here? We can stay inside this TimeShift bastard thing until the last moment, then.’
‘Yeeess…that might be the answer. It’d probably be quicker. Although, we might have a problem if they don’t believe us. We can’t afford to spend too long trying to persuade them; the boy mightn’t last that long.’ Edwards narrowed his eyes.
‘Don’t you worry about that. The doc’ll come with us!’
***
Finding the hospital proved to be the easy part.
It was a small hospital, and at that time of night there were a mixture of sleeping and wakeful patients, nurses doing rounds and writing in folders and dealing with a number of minor crises, but it seemed impossible to find a doctor. They stood at a doorway staring into a restroom where a nurse was sitting with a half empty mug of something and a pile of papers. She looked tired.
‘Don’t they have doctors here at night?’ asked Edwards.
‘I suppose they must have, but I don’t know where we’ll find them.’ They looked at each other.
‘Well, why don’t we just take a nurse?’
‘Well, why not? Come on.’
They hurried back to the sleigh, and as soon as they were aboard, Henderson switched off the TimeShift.
‘Right! Let’s go!’
They ran through the entrance and down the corridor, ignoring the shout from the desk porter, and burst into the restroom.
‘We’ve got a boy dying out there!’
‘What? Who are you? Where?’
‘I don’t know the address; you just need to come with us. He’s having a fit.’
‘I can’t just go…’ Her voice faded away as she took a proper look at the elves.
‘You’ll come with us,’ said Lesley, in a voice that said very clearly that she was going with them. ‘You need to bring anything?’
‘Er, yes…a couple of things…I’ll need a hand.’
‘Right, come on. We’re in a hurry!’
There was plenty of room on the sleigh, with most of the sacks now lying empty on the floor at the back. It took a couple of seconds to deploy the new ramp and push the trolley of equipment on board, and then they were up in the sky again, the nurse in the front seat beside Henderson. As soon as the reindeer started up and they were back in TimeShift, he felt himself relax.
‘Right. Sorry about this, but there’s a boy having a fit, and the ambulance would never get through this snow.’ She nodded.
‘Okay, I get that. I understand that you’re Santa Claus…I suppose. But,’ she lowered her voice and jerked her thumb backwards, ‘who on earth are they?’
‘Elves.’
‘They look a bit rough for elves!’
‘I’ve had worse.’
‘You want a beer, love?’
‘What? I…’
‘We’re here!’ said Henderson, hurriedly. This time he managed to bring the sleigh down in the road, squeezing in between a couple of parked cars.
‘Let’s get the trolley off first.’
They pushed it through the snow up to the front door, and then Henderson switched off the TimeShift.
‘Okay. Hurry!’
They hammered on the front door.
***
It was two hours later.
At least, in some ways it was, but just at that moment it was really a hundred and eighty-nine and a bit years earlier.
‘And you’re sure the little feller’s alright, now?’
‘The nurse said he’ll be fine. And we’ve only got two more drops, then we can go home.’
‘Right, I think we need some more beers, then.’
‘Hey, these are good ones!’ Henderson said in surprise. Edwards looked hurt.
‘What was wrong with my lagers? You seemed happy enough with them earlier.’
‘Oh, nothing. No, they were great. I mean, these are pretty expensive ones. Where on Earth did they come from?’
‘Oh, they were in the lounge in that house. I’m sure no one will mind.’
‘No,’ Henderson agreed, ‘under the circumstances, I’m sure they won’t.’
***
If you’ve read this far, and my thanks for doing that, then you might like to read last year’s Christmas short stories:
‘Right,’ said Henderson, ‘here we go.’ He pressed the big green button and the reindeer burst into life. Less than ten seconds later, they were cruising through the sky just below the clouds. The TimeShift had kicked in, and, looking down, they could see they were passing over what appeared to be a small town, nearly every chimney of every house belching smoke, and the few roads between them devoid of traffic. Then the air around them crackled slightly, and instantly they landed on a rooftop in a modern day housing development. It was night time.
Henderson glanced at the elves and nodded. ‘Okay?’
‘Nah, you’re the Big S. Best you do it.’
‘You know the rules!’ he said, in a passable imitation of Nicol’s voice. To his surprise, they looked at each other, grinned, and then got out.
They all stepped forward together, and found themselves in the middle of a darkened room, although each of them was able to see as clearly as if it were daytime. There was a single bed on either side of the room, each containing a sleeping child. On the end of each bed lay a large bag shaped like a sock, made from red material and embroidered in white with ‘Merry Christmas.’ A card table had been set up at the foot of one of the beds, covered with a small white cloth on which there was a small glass of sherry, and a plate with two mince pies and a carrot. He popped the mince pies and carrot into a small bag he was carrying, and poured the sherry into a flask. While he did that, the ‘elves’ put the regulation number of presents into each bag.
‘Dunnit.’ Said one of them. Henderson nodded, put a tick against the first name on his list, did that thing with his fingers he had to do, and then they were back in the sleigh. He turned around and put the bag and the flask on the floor behind the seat, and pressed the button.
‘Mind if we have these?’ said a voice behind him.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Cheers. Saves on lunch, anyway.’ He paused. ‘They don’t mind you eating one or two, do they?’
‘No, eat as much as you want. They don’t much care what happens to them anyway.’
‘What do they do with them when we get back, then? Do they just throw them away?’
‘They used to, but it goes to a food bank, now.’
‘What about the carrot? Can I give it to the reindeer?’
‘No, these ones can’t eat carrots. Don’t try it, whatever you do.’
‘Oh. Right.’ There was silence for a moment, then he heard a fsshh followed rapidly by two others, and then a hand suddenly appeared over his shoulder holding a tin of lager.
‘There you go, Big S. There’s a spot of Christmas cheer. It’s a bloody long day, this.’
‘Oh, thanks,’ he said in surprise. He took a sip, and then shivered slightly. It tasted pretty strong. ‘Better than that bloody sherry, anyday. Cheers!’
‘What happens to that?’
‘The sherry? Biofuel. That’s all it’s good for.’
A couple of hours into the shift, Henderson found he was beginning to relax. He was beginning to relax quite a lot, actually. He took his hands off the controls and turned around, leaning one elbow on the back of his seat.
‘I know one of you guys is called Edwards,’ he said, conversationally, ‘what about the other?’
‘It’s Lesley,’ the bigger of the two said grimly, clenching his fists belligerently. Henderson smiled.
‘Oh, right. Lesley, then, pass me another of those tins, would you?’
He reckoned they must be about halfway through the shift. It was always difficult to tell, what with their bobbing backwards and forwards randomly through the last two hundred years or more, and because of that it seemed somehow ridiculous to start worrying about whether it was two o’clock or three o’clock.
And at the moment, it didn’t seem to matter anyway.
But gradually they were working their way through the list; each name was ticked off in order, and the sacks that held the presents in the back of the sleigh were slowly emptying.
He thought he’d drunk three of those lagers, although there was a little voice somewhere inside him insisting it was four, and was just thinking it was a jolly good job that he didn’t actually have to drive the sleigh, when…
Crunch! Sssssssccccrrrrrsssshhhhhhh! Whump!
It took a lot to get reindeer to crash, but it seemed he’d managed it.
‘Where are we?’ Henderson slowly wriggled up from the foot well and got back onto his seat. He pulled his list out from his pocket and stared down at it.
‘Err, just outside Huddersfield. Probably.’ They had landed, but for some reason instead of coming down gently onto the roof of the house they were to visit, the sleigh had rushed down through the falling snow until it had collided with a hedge of conifers. The impetus had taken them through the trees, although they seemed to have a fair amount of snow and twigs over them and on the floor of the sleigh, then they had bounced a couple of times on the ground and come to rest against a low stone wall that formed part of the rear boundary of quite a large house.
He felt a little shaken, but nothing worse than that. He looked round at the others.
‘There’s a fair bit o’ the white stuff here, ain’t there?’ said Edwards, rubbing the back of his head,
‘Yes. Are you both okay?’
‘Yeah. Let’s get on with it.’ They all stood up, and Lesley picked up one of the sacks.
‘Right.’ They stepped forwards, but all that happened was that they found themselves standing ankle deep in fresh snow. ‘Oh.’
‘That’s not meant to happen,’ put in Lesley.
‘No,’ Henderson looked up into the sky, where the clouds were continuing to release a fair amount of snow, ‘and nor is that.’
‘What?’
‘Somehow, we’re in real time. Get back in the sleigh.’ They jumped in, and Henderson sat staring at the SatNav with its large red over-ride button, wondering what he should do now. He had a feeling that he’d been told about this the previous year, but the alcohol had made his thoughts rather woolly. As he hesitated, though, he heard a shout and looked up to see a couple of figures running towards them.
‘Oh, shit!’ Quickly he pressed the start button, and the reindeer roared into life. Seconds later they were up in the clouds again, and then they were down and sitting on a snow-covered roof. He looked at his list, then looked suspiciously at the co-ordinates showing on the SatNav. It seemed the program had reset itself automatically and they were now at the correct house.
Inside, he checked the list again. One child, boy, aged eight. Name of Dylan. On top of a chest of drawers was a hand-written note beside a mince pie and a couple of chocolates that read ‘For Santa, love from Dylan.’
That seemed okay then. He put a tick next to the name and they returned to the sleigh.
It was another short hop to the next call; the sleigh had barely risen to the clouds before it was down on a roof again. This time, the snow was seriously thick, and the flakes hanging silently around them were very big and very fluffy. It was remarkable, he thought, that the reindeer didn’t feel the cold.
But they wouldn’t, of course. Not these ones.
‘Right, come on. Only a few more to do, now.’ They stepped forward into the snow and materialised in a small bedroom.
And froze in horror at what they saw.
***
If you’ve read this far, and my thanks for doing that, then you might like to read last year’s Christmas short stories:
…slowly, he inched his way along the ledge, his heart in his mouth. It was too late to even contemplate turning back now. The sun was sinking rapidly in the pale sky in front of him, dropping towards the distant plains that were almost hidden in the desert haze. It would be completely dark within the hour. For the first time, he knew real fear. He could never survive a night on this thin, narrow ledge – God knows, there was barely enough room to stand and almost nothing to hold on to. It was inevitable that he would slip off at some point. Even now, there was a thin skin of ice on much of the surface, and the terrible cold would descend as soon as the sun disappeared.
Gritting his teeth, he edged towards what looked like a slightly better foothold, and cried out in sudden terror as his foot slid into space, the momentum taking him over the edge and falling…
Hell, I can’t do that! Stop! Phew, that was close.
As writers, we have to be so careful, because nowadays even our characters have rights, did you know that? And we can’t just be doing this and that to them, just as we please. Only the other day, a lawyer claiming to be acting for a character in a well-known children’s series attempted to take the author to court and sue her for, literally, defamation of character.
This character claimed that the author had totally misrepresented his actions, and applied motives to them that could only be described as evil.
And she said he had no nose, which was just spiteful.
He has claimed damages running into millions of dollars.
If this character is successful, then it is difficult to know where we will see this ending.
The fact that the author has created said character is no defence in law. Really, they are like our children. And whereas a few hundred years or more ago, parents had absolute authority over their children, and, short of killing them, could do whatever they so willed with them, nowadays they have more rights than their parents. And I’m afraid that it may come to that with our characters, too.
‘Why should I be killed off?’ They cry. ‘What right have you…?’ And so they will challenge it.
It has even been mooted in some quarters that these characters should perhaps be able to resort to the legal process appropriate for the time and world that they have been created for. Thus, a dragon in a tale set in ancient times, peeved because the author claimed it ate virgins and had bad breath (not sure if the two are connected…) might very well demand that it meet the author in Trial by Combat, a trial that the author would probably be rather ill-prepared to face.
Upset a Tudor monarch or a Viking chieftain, and I wouldn’t give much for your chances.
And any authors writing tales set in the future, who had unwisely failed to specify what sort of legal process was in existence at this time, might find the lawyers, or even their characters, being given the right to specify this. And that might get very nasty indeed.
But there may still be one remedy open to us. If our characters hold the threat of litigation over us, we might, just might, be able to retaliate by threatening to make their next incarnation even more horrible than the one that they are prosecuting us over. Threaten to sue me for creating you with a flatulence problem? Go ahead, and see what problems you have in my next novel! Don’t forget I’m writing a series! You had quite a decent time in the last one, it’ll be the torture chamber for you next!
It might work, but I’m still nervous about it.
So what am I going to do? I’m just going to write nice stories about pussy cats, from now on, that’s what.
Authors, you have been warned!
Somali, at: Somali K Chakrabarti has put up such a generous review of my book, Making Friends with the Crocodile, that I am going to spend the rest of the day puffed up with most unreasonable pride! It comes as I battle with the various internet demons to put up a version on Kobo (ready in a couple of days, I hope), and, finally, a Print On Demand version for sale in India.
My biggest worry when I published the book, was that as a Western male writing in the voice of an Indian female, I would not be able to make it sound realistic, but I finally feel reassured by Somali’s review.
It can be found here: Making friends with the Crocodile
Mick Canning 