Christmas Special
A Borgesian Xmas Library of Delights
In the Christmas Preview newsletter of just a few days ago I promised that this Christmas you would be visited by three Christmas stories, all with JellyBread connections (ie. they would involve characters you know from the main strand of the JellyBread newsletter/novel). Well, plans change, and for many reasons (work, life, influenza, eaten too much, drank too much, parental responsibilities, other responsibilities etc etc etc) I have been unable to get the Christmas stories up to a standard I think you - and Christmas - have come to deserve. So, instead, here is a peak at my Borgesian library of Christmas stories yet to be told.
Here is a catalogue of all the stories I have yet to writer, in their form as one essence of a Christmas story, just as the ol’ master Jorge Luis Borges would have preferred.
“Oink Oink Oink!!!” - a kid is humiliated when he makes the wrong farmyard animal noise when pulled on stage at a Panto and spends the rest of his life seeking bloody revenge on the light entertainment comedy duo who made fun of him.
“Christmas Fuck!” - a group of friends learn how a Boxing Day fight in a pub car park can reveal the true meaning of Christmas.
“The Loneliness of Not Knowing How to Leave a Party” - a kid has never been taught how to say “I need to go home now” and is stuck at his neighbour’s Father Christmas party in the first episode of a life besmirched by incapabilities.
“Boiled Ham” - the murder weapon is in plain sight (idea borrowed from Roald Dahl).
“Shiver and Shake” - a kid who trembles “with excitement” every Christmas morning doesn’t have his tinsel allergy identified until it’s too late.
“Speed Date Santa” - the trials of finding love when everyone knows you grant wishes for a living.
“The Santa Trials” - when data is revealed that ethnic minority children have received more coal in their stockings than white privileged children in the last two hundred years one question raises its head: can you cancel Santa?
“Grab them by the Rudolph” - a searing satire on the American Big Money elite follows the fall out when former president Donald Trump turns up at the Mar-a-Lago Christmas Party dressed in the role of Santa Claus.
“Port and Lemonade” - a nostalgia piece telling the story from a child’s perspective of Christmas Eve down The Boiler Makers, the clubhouse of the local football team, in the 1980s, with pissed adults half-obscured like exotic mountain-tops by clouds of smoke. Much intimated drama on the peripheries of a child’s understanding. And someone dies. A reporter is murdered. Intrigue gives the story an edge.
“Cotton Wool Balls” - one year, the kid gets conjunctivitis on Christmas Eve. Hilarity ensues.
“Inflamed Baubles” - another year, the kid wakes up with a massive inflamed gonad on Christmas morning. Hilarity ensues.
“Saint Stephen’s Day” - a raucous composite of all the Boxing Day pissups in the Pips from when the kid is about 17 onwards really. On this occasion someone dies. A reporter freezes in the ice. His name was Stephen and he was determined that his New Year resolution was to write only positive stories for his local paper.
“Working Class Hero” - a kid is kept up late on Christmas Eve by the ghost of John Lennon, the one wearing that black flared suit with wide brimmed hat, who won’t stop going on about workers’ rights and power to the people and all that shite, and the kid realises that a true believer in progressive political agendas never sleeps and certainly never takes time off for Christmas. Kid firebombs the Panasonic factory up on the Industrial estate and is quickly arrested on Christmas morning. His dad is proud but can’t show it because mum has spent two days prepping the Christmas dinner and she’s well pissed off.
“Not a Creature was Stirring” - kid watches Robert Wise’s The Haunting late on Christmas Eve on Channel Four when everyone else has gone to bed and spends all of Christmas Day convinced he’s being watched by a malevolent force. He is not wrong.
“Christmas with the Wookies” - in the early 1980s of the non-internet age, two kids go on a journey to find the tape of the legendary Star Wars Christmas special, and it takes them across town on foot a d they have a kind of Odyssian experience - an odyssey, if you will - where they meet one-eyed men and seductive women.