The greatest Christmas story never told
It’s not that great and I’m telling it now, so those are both lies
The vale is covered in a freezing fog, the kind that limits your view and softens all sound, reducing the world to just the few metres around you. I find it soothing, the way the rest of the world and its worries do not exist; there is only me, this tree and that cormorant.
There are a lot of things I do not understand, such as why moles only tear up the lawn in winter. Do they migrate? Is there a mole migration? Why are sunsets so beautiful when it’s frosty?
I’d like to know what those Cormorants are up to.
I’d like to know why people read this, so that I could write better, and more informative posts. I know that there are things that I shouldn’t talk about. I know I shouldn’t talk about my worms (the composting type, not the parasitic type) for example, though I’m very proud of my progress in vermiculture. Worms are not a topic that draws people in, though they are fascinating, surely as interesting as the deer and birds and other garden wildlife in their way. I know that there’s almost no one on my very small email list that wants to know how to make coconut yoghurt, although I’m incredibly proud that I managed to make up my own recipe, completely unlike the others I’ve seen on the Internet. I try not to bore people.
The cormorant seems to come when the weather is bad, particularly fog. I have a lot of foggy shots of cormorants, but today I have not brought my camera, because I am cross with it, because the lens is broken. Not the zoom lens that I would’ve used for this photo through, so I am an idiot. I can see the cormorant clearly, can see the green of his eye; maybe I’m imagining it.
I explain to a passer-by, as I stand perilously close to the frozen lake water being odd, that I am obsessed the cormorant, which does not make me seem more normal, as I’d hoped. He tells me he’s never looked up at the tree, that he’s never noticed a cormorant there, but he will now. I wonder what it’s like not to notice things like birds, and lizards and really good beetles. I don’t think I’d like it.
I have a lot of questions, most of them about animal behaviour. I stand in the freezing fog and wonder if the cormorants wonder what I am up to. ‘Often see her up at the lake when it’s foggy’, they say. ‘think it’s a winter migration thing’.
Google doesn’t have the answers, and maybe no one does except Eric, the cormorant, who likes to come here in bad weather to chill out because the river is flooded, and the big lake is too crowded, and he just wants a bit of peace on his dead tree. The fishings not great, but sometimes fishing is more of a mediative pursuit.
I have paused printing, so there is nothing much to show you, but because it’s the end of term and you’ve all been very good, and work very hard, so I’ll give you a story.
Stinky, the Christmas Pooh.
Or, I have never met Sue Colmer, and she should pray I never do.
Any parent will tell you at Christmas time is arduous at primary schools. There’s always a seemingly infinite number of dress up days, pantomimes, nativities, carol concerts and other awful business to conduct. When my son was in his final year, it was determined that he and his fellows would have some responsibilities at the school Christmas fair. My son was signed up to do one of those stalls where you get to name something and the winner gets a prize, in this case, a giant Winnie the Pooh bear festooned with a Christmas hat. The bear was huge, of dubious origins, and had the wobbly deformities of a copyright infringing cartoon drawn on the back of an ice cream van. The stall was obviously very unpopular, so it didn’t matter so much his partner in crime was a no show.
I arrive with my son hoping to drop him off and scarper like a responsible parent, but a harassed looking woman tells me that he is to simultaneously run the school raffle. Now, my son is an honest and sometimes even responsible boy, but he was also, at this stage, 10 years old, and in no way ready to take sole control of the biggest money spinning event in the school year. I start to explain this, but the woman has already made good her escape, shouting behind her Sue Colmer will soon arrive to take over.
The raffle is surprisingly popular, because, I am told, school is small, and the prizes are quite good, so you stand a pretty good chance. It does occur to me while being forced to fill out hundreds of ticket stubs, it might be much better and easier for me to simply put my phone number on everybody else’s raffle tickets, but I am an honest person so I settle for buying a couple.
Now, I was not the most involved parent, due, in part, to my natural characteristics, but also my because the school still sent home letters to inform me of important events, such as sports day. My son, not keen on competitive sports, carefully filed these in the nearest dustbin, which lead to a lot of ignorance of school happenings (I cannot, in all honestly, blame my son in this. If I had two sports days a year, at least one would certainly end up in the bin. I do blame the school for not using email in the 21st century though). This might explain why the head teacher was so surprised to see me dealing, or failing to deal, with such an important and lucrative enterprise. I explained I was just holding the fort till the legendary Sue Colmer arrived for her shift. The headteacher knew where Sue Colmer, my mortal enemy, was, and went off to fetch her.
While I dealt inefficiently with the increasing raffle queue, my son was busying himself collecting 20 pence and names for his designated stall. It wasn’t very busy, because, as I said, most parents didn’t want to touch the prize with a barge pole, let alone allow it into their homes. Those very small children that were permitted to play were all resolutely naming the thing Winnie, because well, it was, or at least was trying to be, Winnie the Pooh. He doesn’t need a name, he’s already got one. The parents were mostly happy with this, as it greatly reduced the chances of winning the thing.
Business was slow, and my son was bored, and at this point he decided it was worth sacrificing 20 of his hard scavenged pennies to force his teacher to read what he considered a slightly rude word without risk getting into trouble. What a plan! He coughed up the cash (I told you he was honest) and wrote ‘Stinky Pooh’. He also wrote his own name next to it. This was a mistake.
At this point, it would’ve been prudent for me to consider how the winner was chosen. Was it a random name drawn out of the hat? or was the very best name chosen by select committee? Or was it chosen by a headteacher laden with guilt due to the organisational incompetence of the PTA? I was very busy not coping, so I didn’t bother to investigate. This was the second mistake.
Time elapsed and Sue Colmer, who I would’ve been making a small wax effigy of had I not been so overwhelmed with an infinite raffle queue, had not turned up. I was now, according to the timetable, waiting for Rosie and Clio. Rosie and Clio, like Sue and my son’s partner, had not turned up. My son had, quite understandably, decided the shut down Pooh operations, so he could go and try and win other horrible things the fair.
I have now been there for well an hour, listening to some of the worst Christmas music ever produced, and I was not happy at all. The headteacher passes by again, seems surprised at the lack of Sue Colmers, and goes to find someone to relive me. I can’t remember the full details of what happened next, but the gist of it is, and I think you can guess this, was nobody came to relieve me.
After another half an hour, the headteacher is again surprised; I ask where Rosie and Clio are, I am told Rosie and Clio cannot operate a gambling stall because they are, it transpires, small children. I point out my son is also small children, and no one had a problem with abandoning him to look after hundreds of pounds worth of raffle tickets The whole operation got shut down for being illegal, and so I could ‘enjoy the fair’
I did not enjoy the fair. I left immediately before more bad things happened. I did not wait for the raffle to be announced. I did not pass go. One and a half hours was more than enough. About one and a half hours too much, actually.
The next day, I got an email stating I had won a prize. Now, because you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of what is about to happen. You’re probably, in a pantomime sense, seeing the giant shadow of a mutant Winnie the Pooh looming over me and ‘shouting look behind you!’. I, however, was blissfully ignorant. I’d forgotten that my son had entered any competitions, so I was hoping for, at the very worst, a bottle of low quality wine I could foist off on a relative in lieu of buying present. I was actually quite excited. My husband worked nearest to school, and was dispatched to collect the winnings. His text message read simply ‘you are not going to like this’.
He was right.
My son was not happy either, because if some hideous distorted Pooh bear from hell going to take up most my house, it was going in his room. We could, I suggested, take out the bed so he could use it as a mattress, sleeping entwined in Pooh’s pestilence ridden paws. Sensibly, my husband didn’t bring it home at all, and it lived in the physics department technicians room, staring balefully out of the window at a world that had no love for grotesque bears. I would take people past, point out the monstrosity and tell the sad tale of his coming into my possession. I think eventually it was claimed by some small child with a parent early enough into their parenting career that they didn’t realise their mistake; I did not ask. I did not say goodbye to our friend stinky.
I expect I will do some kind of end of year review at the end of December, but I shall take a couple of weeks off to decorate the house, make some presents, mull some wine and drink a toast to stinky Pooh, the Christmas bear. Merry Christmas.