Here is a short story I wrote for Radio 4 to broadcast on Christmas Day.
It was read by the very excellent Adrian Scarborough, and, while it’s still on BBC Sounds, I suggest you go here to listen to him read it. But if it’s no longer there, here it is.
Not Even A Mouse
By John Finnemore
Guess what colour my wife’s dressing gown is. No, go on, just guess. …Green? No, not green. Why would it be green? …Yes, no, fair point, perhaps you need a spot more context.
Well, look. Let me be very clear about one thing from the off. At the start of this story, I’m stumping home on Christmas Eve wearing a black hat with ‘Bah Humbug!’ printed on it. And then later, something remarkable happens to me on the stroke of midnight. The assurance I want to give you is this: I do not learn a thing. Not a sausage. In particular, at the end of the story, I feel precisely the same way about Christmas as I do at the start of the story. Which is, you know… pffff. I don’t mind it. I certainly don’t hate it. But if we all collectively decided not to bother next year, that would be fine with me.
And this, you’ll agree, is one of several important differences between me and Ebenezer Scrooge. I’m Michael, by the way; Michael Cope, hello. Scrooge did hate Christmas. We are left in no doubt about this, Charles Dickens not being much of a boy for subtext. But Scrooge’s problem with Christmas was that he didn’t see why we should be nice to each other just because it’s Christmas. Whereas my problem with it, inasmuch as I have one, is that I don’t see why we should be nice to each other just because it’s Christmas. You see? Quite different. Although, yes, I realise… not in terms of the actual words. But what I’m saying is: Scrooge was arguing for a reduction of being-nice-to-each-other days by one, whereas I’m in favour of an increase by 364.
We also differ in appearance. Scrooge, we’re told, was a meagre old man, with pointed nose and shrivelled cheek. My nose is round, my cheeks are blooming, and my worst enemy wouldn’t call me meagre. And nor would my doctor. My doctor would, and does, talk about the importance of making some changes to my lifestyle, even though I’ve never had a lifestyle, I’ve just lived. And my worst enemy, if I had one, I hope I don’t, would call me fat. And so would I, because I am.
The only similarities between Scrooge and me, then, are firstly, as mentioned, that something extraordinary happened to each of us on the night before Christmas; and secondly that we both associated ourselves with the phrase ‘Bah Humbug’. Him, by saying it constantly. Me, by wearing it on a hat.
So why, given that I don’t feel particularly bah about Christmas, and only mildly humbug, the hat? Well, the thing is this. Suppose you are a man of a certain age; and that age is… I wouldn’t say old, but it can certainly see old. And it can’t see young. And suppose also you are of a certain build, of the sort that makes doctors speak of lifestyles, as discussed. And suppose finally that you also happen to have a great big bushy snowy white beard. Well, in these circumstances, come December, you have a decision to make. You can lean in… or you can lean out. There’s not really a middle path.
Now, I live in a fairly tiny village, and everyone there is very well aware that I am not Father Christmas. But further afield, the black santa hat with ‘bah humbug’ on it is simply an efficient signalling mechanism. It says to small children: ‘It’s probably not him’ and it says to big children, and certain adults: ‘Can we not?’
Incidentally, I don’t think the beard does make me look like Father Christmas; I think it makes me look like Karl Marx. But here, I accept, I am in a minority of one. No-one ever leans out of a passing car window to shout ‘From each according to his ability to each according to his need!’ at me. I wish they did.
So, on this particular Christmas Eve, home, as I say, I stump. The stumping doesn’t denote grumpiness, it’s just the way I walk. I get to my cottage. I wave hello to my next door neighbours - nice woman and her little girl, one of them’s called Eloise, but I’m never sure which, so I’ve managed to go five years without directly calling either of them anything. I let myself in. I have the house to myself for a couple of days, because Ruth has gone to Bristol to visit our daughter. And the grandkids.
Now, hold your horses. Yes, yes, I know how that sounds, but listen. This is a long-standing arrangement that suits everyone. Don’t think I’m not a nice Grandpa- I’m a lovely Grandpa, though I say so myself. But Christmas is not the time I shine. Summer’s when I shine. Every summer holidays, we all go to a farm in Wales for a week, I help the kids feed chickens, take them go-karting, push them into the pool with their clothes on – I’m generally the life and soul of the party. But Christmas is more Grandma’s thing. So, Grandma Ruth goes over for Christmas, and Grandpa Michael sends much love and rich gifts, but stays at home with a takeaway curry and a DVD of the most recent Ashes series.
So, about 10 o’clock on Christmas Eve, with England 240 for 5 at tea, I washed up my plate, put on the burglar alarm, and went to bed.
And it was about midnight, as in Scrooge’s case, that the extraordinary event occurred. In his case, of course, it was being visited by four ghosts. Not three, four - Marley was a ghost too. Everyone always forgets Marley. In my case, and this really is truly extraordinary, and I still don’t have a rational explanation for it - it was the inexplicable failure of a very elegant method for generating memorable burglar alarm codes.
You see, like anyone with good security hygiene, I change the code every week. Stephen Cherry sees fit to mock me for this, but then again the code to Stephen Cherry’s electronic gate is quite clearly one of the four possible combinations of three 9s and a 1. As is evident to any passer-by, or passing burglar, from his number panel with an extremely shiny 9 and a fairly shiny 1.
I, as I say, change ours every week, and to do so I have created a simple method of generating endless new codes which are unguessable yet effortlessly memorable. It really is beautifully elegant- I wish I could share it with you. Suffice it to say that it’s a system that never fails - in fact, that cannot fail. Although on this occasion, it did.
And so, when I got up at twenty to twelve and wanted to go back downstairs, for reasons which need not concern us, but which I found nonetheless pressing, I put in this week’s new code, and instead of the usual pleased burrrr, I got a tetchy tick tick tick. At first, I didn’t even know what it meant - which only goes to prove my point, because the reason I didn’t know what it meant was that in five years of putting a new code in every week, I had literally never heard it before. The ‘number not recognised’ noise which I now discovered my burglar alarm could make had had as little exercise as the digits two through eight on Stephen Cherry’s front gate keypad. Anyway. For whatever ineffable reason, the code which was definitely the right code wasn’t the right code; and I wasn’t able to go downstairs. And I very much wanted to go downstairs. We live in one of the old cottages by the green, you see, and the bedroom’s the only upstairs room. No exceptions.
So. I retreated back to the bedroom, and considered my options. These appeared to be two. One was to wake up the whole village, in the middle of the night before Christmas, with a loud burglar alarm that I would then be unable to turn off. The other was… the window.
Now. This was not quite as dare-devil a prospect as it may at first sound. For one thing, I keep a large and powerful torch in the bedroom for - well, not for just such emergencies, as this particularly emergency had never occurred to me, but at any rate for emergencies. Then, the bedroom being a loft-conversion, the window gives directly onto the low, gently sloping tiled roof of the cottage. I’ve been out on it scores of time for maintenance and repairs. Not in the middle of the night, admittedly, but see above re torch. And the roof comes all the way down, as is the way of these old cottages, to barely six feet above the flower beds. Perfectly easy to let yourself down from. Not dignified, perhaps, but easy. And then, I would have the whole of my back garden at my disposal. For let us have no further secrets between friends – what I needed was a wee.
So, I opened the window, and clambered out. Two things immediately struck me, once I was actually out on the roof. It seemed very much colder than it had done last time I was up on it, clearing the gutters one sunny afternoon in July. And the six foot drop to the ground seemed very much higher. Logic told me that only one of these things could possibly be true, but they both seemed to strike me pretty forcefully. I clambered back in again.
Inside, with the clarity of mind and speed of decision-making only a full bladder can provide, I collected reinforcements. Firstly, Ruth’s dressing gown. My own dressing gown is a sort of thin towelling affair, and besides, it’s older than I am. I mean, not literally, obviously, but in dressing gown years. Whereas Ruth’s is a big fluffy quilted job, which I can only describe as - it’s not a word I like, but it’s the one that meets the case - snuggly. Secondly, I gathered up the duvet from my bed, which I planned to drop onto the ground below, and use as a sort of makeshift crashmat. What I then intended to use later in the night as a sort of makeshift duvet, I’m not sure. I think possibly I felt this was future Michael’s problem.
Thus equipped, I clambered back out onto the roof. The wind had picked up now, and as I edged carefully along the tiles, I realised that the large duvet I was dragging behind me was threatening to act as a sail. I gathered up the corners to reduce the surface area, and slung it over my shoulder. I then wedged the torch between my shoulder and my beard, thus freeing up the other hand to steady myself against the chimney stack.
At this point, a number of things happened, in sequence. First, it turned midnight. Second, the clock in the village church across the way began announcing event one. Third, I looked up sharply, startled by event two. Fourth, the torch, released from my shoulder by event three, fell on to the roof, and then rolled down the tiles and into the gutter with a noise like the devil’s own glockenspiel. And fifth… presumably in response to event four, suddenly in the dark streets shineth an everlasting light. From my neighbour’s upstairs window.
And it was only as I gazed up at that rectangle of light, and saw, framed in it, my neighbour’s six year old daughter gazing at me with eyes like saucers, that it occurred to me what colour my wife’s dressing gown is. Guess. That’s right! I told you you’d able to do it with context.
And, I don’t know… I think it was the thought of the black hat. Of me diligently wearing that black bah humbug hat day after day throughout December to counteract the beard…. that meant I just couldn’t stop myself laughing. Which of course didn’t help at all.
And the little girl, without taking her eyes off me for a moment, opened her window, and I’ll never forget the expression of wonder on her face as her little voice called out:
“…Are you alright, Mr. Cope? What are you doing on your roof?”
I mean, I wasn’t surprised. After all she’s six, not three, and we’ve been next door neighbours practically all her life. So, no, not surprised. Or rather… if I was surprised, what surprised me wasn’t the fact that she recognised me, it was the fact that I felt, well… just the tiniest bit… disappointed. I mean. I’d never have predicted it, but in that moment, when I saw her face, it had just sort of flashed upon me that, after all, it might be rather nice- for her, I mean- if she’d thought… well, after all, I’d gone to a fair bit of trouble to achieve the effect. Entirely accidentally, by all means, but undeniably trouble.
Anyway. The girl fetched her Mum - the Mum, it turns out, is the Eloise; the girl is Grace - and Eloise fetched a stepladder, and I was swiftly de-roofed, and invited in to use the facilities, for which relief much thanks. In fact, the pair of them, who were lovely, and whom I really ought to get to know, very sweetly invited me to sleep in their spare room until the alarm situation was resolved. But I declined with thanks, because… well. I was thoroughly awake by that stage, as you can imagine, and it struck me that, if I was going to spend Christmas in someone else’s house, I could do worse than… well, after all, the roads would be empty. I’d have a lovely clear run.
Not, as I say, that this whole incident in the least changed my attitude to Christmas. It did not. I still think it’s a shame we need a festival to remind us it might not be a bad idea to be nice to one another. The only thing it did, possibly, make me reconsider is that… given that we apparently do need such a festival, if you have a choice between leaning in and leaning out of it… perhaps in is the direction in which to lean. And if you happen to look the way I happen to look, and if that happens to be a look that children enjoy, well… from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, and all that. So, on the drive to Bristol, I stopped at the services and bought myself a new hat.
Guess what colour it was.
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