The Night Before the Christmas Before I Was Married & Other Festive Tales

I
t’s difficult to explain, I suppose, how I ended up here in the middle of a crowded shopping centre covered in blood and punching Santa Claus repeatedly in the face with security guards running towards me. Quite surprisingly, it’s a much shorter story than you would imagine.

Home for the holidays. You meet people. People you know, people you once knew, people you have tried hard to no longer know.

I was on High Street cutting through the crowds like a drunken elf through a bottle of brandy when it stared;

Prod. Prod. Prod.

I kept weaving and walking through the masses, trying to work out what it was I was supposed to be buying for Aunty Betty but it kept at me.

Prod. Prod. Proooooooooooood.

I stopped in front of a window displaying a cacophony of confectionary and absently brushed at my shoulder. The prodding stopped and was almost instantly replaced by a tongue in my ear.

“I can’t believe you did that in front of all those people,” I said, dumping two steaming cinnamon latte’s on the table of the coffee house we found ourselves in a few minutes later.

Christine laughed in that way I remembered and we started talking about when we used to be together. She wasn’t anything like I remembered her being, not the girl I had built up in my mind. Not the girl I had made the decision to dump because… I couldn’t remember exactly. She linked arms with me when we finally left the coffee house and it felt good. Natural. Christmassy.

I smiled and it started to snow. Really snow, flurries of the stuff billowing like bastard duvets from the sky. We took shelter in a doorway and Christine leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, her perfume was intoxicating and I should never have let her but it’s always retrospect that gives you clarity isn’t it?

So that’s us - freezing, huddled in a doorway, snow trying it damnedest to bury us where we stood, my lips brush her forehead, my hands so cold that my thumb-ring drops to the ground. I stooped to pick it up and then the next thing I know I’m relating the story to my brother.

“Only you could manage to get engaged to Crazy Christine?” he howls with derisive laughter.

“I don’t think I said anything,” I said, and scratched at my earlobe. “She did all the talking.”

“It takes a special talent to pull off something as mindblowingly stupid as this having only been in the city for,” he looked at his watch. “Five hours is it?”

“Four and a half,” I said, reaching for the mulled wine. I had a feeling I was going to need it.

In all honesty it’s unlikely that the mulled wine fuelled our actions. It’s more likely it was the Stella Artois or perhaps the Cabernet Sauvignon. Either way the alcohol hit me nearly as hard as I knew my actual fiancée would hit me when she arrived the next day and found out I had handed the ring she bought me for my birthday to an ex-girlfriend.

I had a feeling it was going to get awkward.

And I was right.

The doorbell rang and it was Christine. My brother shoved me forward to deal with the situation and, fuelled by alcohol and a resulting lack of self-consciousness I knew I could deal with the situation.

“I don’t love you,” I blurted. “I didn’t even propose you crazy bitch, why would I?”

Never, ever call a woman a crazy bitch when she really is a crazy bitch.

And never, ever, ever call a crazy bitch a crazy bitch when you are standing with your legs slightly parted and partially arseholed. She raised her knee with a practiced precision rendering me speechless and gasping for air on the carpet.

“Don’t think you can get away with this,” she leant down, hissing the words close into my ear so specks of her saliva caught in the tiny hair inside. “When Daddy hears about this… ”

“Gnnnnng?” I tried to say.

“Do you know what a shotgun wedding is?” She grabbed the ring she had taken from me and shoved it into my panting mouth. I rolled over so that my back was towards her and lay, inhaling carpet fibres and breathing heavily whilst she made her exit, slamming the door behind her.

After a brief but necessary recovery my drunken brother and I resolved that decisive action was required so, with less than twenty four hours until my fiancée arrived I went to head Christine off at the pass. We called a taxi and cracked open another can of lager for the road.

“So, you see, I can’t marry your daughter,” I explained as calmly as I could to her father. “It was just a bit of a misunderstanding.”

He looked at me for a moment, digesting the information and inhaling the alcohol fumes pouring from me. He pulled his big white fake beard down a little and spoke.

“Seems pretty straightforward to me,” he said, the red hat with its white trim slipping backwards on his head. “You proposed to her. You marry her. It’s that simple.”

“What? Are you bloody insane?”

He stood up and leaned in close to me, the stuffing inside his coat pushing against my stomach.

“No swearing in front of the kids,” he whispered in a way that was distinctly un-jolly. “Or I’ll be forced to teach you a lesson.”

There wasn’t much else to say. There was no reasoning with stupidity on this scale. I took my mobile out of my jeans’ pocket and dialed my fiancée’s number. I have found over the course of our relationship that honesty is the best policy. I put my hand theatrically over the mouthpiece and leaned towards Christine’s father.

“Just going to give me actual fiancée a call,” I said conspiratorially then removed the hand as she answered. “Hi darling… delayed? Oh shame, I was looking forward to seeing you… yes… not too bad… yes… no… mmm, I got Aunt Betsy that toffee you mentioned… ah, just one thing… there’s a girl here thinks I’m engaged to her… yes I am pretty drunk… no I wasn’t when it happened… yeah, it’ll all be sorted when you get here, I’m with the crazy bitch’s father now… ”

Santa hit me hard with the open palm of his hand, smashing the phone into my ear and knocking me to the ground. The children stared, some gawping, all of them swimming around in my blurred vision.

“You mad bastard,” I touched my ear and found pieces of the plastic casing of my mobile phone sticking out of it, blood starting to run from the Santa-inflicted wounds.

He came at me fast, his knee going to my chest, his arm pulling back ready to punch.

“I told you,” he said, glancing up at the collection of infants. “No swearing in front of the kids.”

But the old man was too slow. Adrenaline kicked in and I caught his punch, deflecting it past my good ear before rolling over and tipping him onto his back and hitting.

And hitting and hitting and hitting.

And hitting.

You’ve probably got a picture in your mind now of me. This prize fighter beating an old man to death like some psychotic. But you’d be wrong. The problem is that I hit like a girl.

I would maintain that I don’t run like a girl or throw like a girl, but hitting - something I had never really done before - I discovered quickly was done in the manner of a six year old girl in a pink dress and pigtails.

Soon the kids became bored. Some of them walked off.

“Mummy,” one said without taking his gaze from us. “Do you think that man didn’t get what he asked for? I liked the Santa from the other shopping centre better.”

“No darling I don’t think he did,” she replied. “But look - I think those security guards are going to help Santa out. Shall we go and get some ice cream?”

I looked up through the dissipating crowd and the finally saw the security guards and bolted - through the food court, hurled myself through Marks and Spencers out the doors and into the waiting taxi.

“Sorted?” asked my brother.

“Sorted.” I said, my chest heaving.

He handed me a fresh can of lager.

“Merry Christmas you arsehole.”

S
o I told you about last Christmas, yeah?  How I wound up beating the living shit out of Santa?  Not the real Santa, of course, it was the father of my ex-girlfriend dressed up.  Ah well, it was the night before the Christmas before I was married.  It all worked out in the end I suppose because now I’m happily married and thankfully not to my ex-girlfriend.  

The thing about marriage is that it requires a bit of give and take so this year was going to be have to be different.  This year it wasn’t going to be the easy by-the-numbers of accidentally becoming engaged to a loony tunes ex-girlfriend and beating the crap out of Santa all the while relying on my brother to help extricate me from said predicament.  This year the big guns were out.  This year we weren’t visiting my family.  We were visiting my wife Sonia’s family.

Hang on, that deserves capital letters.  MY WIFE’S FAMILY.

WHAT A BUNCH OF LOON BAGS.  Sorry.  I mean what a bunch of interesting people whose take on life is slightly different to my own.  And my wife’s.  And pretty much anyone else I had ever met who walked upright.

There were others but, for the purposes of this discourse I will limit myself to the relevant players.  Perhaps I can bend you ear another time on the complexities of the twin Aunts Nadia and Maria…

Firstly there was her little cousin Jeff whose dual fixation with his female relatives’ breasts and the cartoon PowerFormers seemed equally disturbing and interchangeable.  And secondly there was her father.  He was a man who seemed to be one hundred and fifty years old, the last seventy of which he had spent in a chair by the fire apparently due to the fact that his skeleton had been removed.  He liked to have Terry’s Chocolate Orange melted down and would drink it through a straw until it solidified then throw the mug with all his might at whoever was closest to him whilst screaming the words “Why Gertrude? Why?”

Needless to say I found this out the hard way.  Someone, possibly my wife who had retreated into drunkenness a full half hour after arriving home, had slopped the stuff on the floor.  I only realised this when I felt the warm goo seeping through my sock and solidifying on the cold sole of foot.  I may have had the chance to dwell on this had it not been for the glancing blow the side of my head received courtesy of the father in law.  My wife blew a sort of raspberry laugh at the scene but showed no signs of entertaining sobriety any time soon.

Breakfast was accompanied with a nip of sherry.

Mid-morning snack and pre-lunch was mulled wine.

Lunch time - a bottle of red wine.

Evening time spirits were raised by raising glass after glass of spirits.

Need I say more?

It was, it has to be said, a drunkenness that I sympathised with but not one I could dive into.  It was one thing to inflict yourself on your own family who would forgive you no matter what.  It was another entirely to be howling the words AND ANOTHER THING whilst stabbing a dipsomaniacal digit at anyone you weren’t related to.

Which was why I was so disappointed when, on Christmas Eve after forty eight hours of virtual success things took a turn for the worse.

Papa – for that was what he insisted I call him in spite of the fact that everyone else called him Dad – got to congealing point with his Chocolate Orange and was preparing to hurl the thing across the room.  Now, being sober I’d been watching the proceedings with some interest, noting the stages and waiting for the inevitable to occur.  When he reached the point of no return I reacted, standing up and making a break for the door before some worse injury was inflicted.

It seemed that my dear wife Sonia had the same idea but my execution was a little more precise than hers.  She rolled off the sofa into my path, I tripped on her prone and giggling form, my right foot shooting forward, trying to find purchase before finding it safely at the base of the Christmas tree.  Well, not that safely.  Before reaching the floor my foot passed through first wrapping paper, then (I found out after I removed it) a cardboard box, some plastic cellophane and then something that crunched a plasticky, snappity crunch under my weight.  Fortunately for me I had learned the lesson of the previous night and had opted to wear my trainers around the house.  If I hadn’t then whatever was in the present would have sliced through my foot and landed me in the hospital.

Whether or not that was a better position to be in was a moot point.  Something was broken.  Something that had once been whole was now in shards, several of which had pierced the sole of my shoe and were precariously close to doing the same thing to the ball of my foot.

In an awesome display of Homo erectus my father in law jumped to his feet.

“Whah-whah-what-what-what did you just do you clumsy oaf of a man?” he barked, his bones suddenly solidifying and his lungs filling with venomous air.

“Um,” I said as I pulled the plastic out of the danger zone, hopped once then stood straight.  “I tripped over your daughter Papa.”

“You, sir, are drunk, sir,” he pointed a wizened finger at me.

Sonia giggled at my feet and tried to bury her head in the rug.

“And is that?” he pointed again, this time allowing his finger to shake.  “Is that Jeff’s PowerFormer?  My wife waited in line for three hours for that.  You can’t buy them for love nor money.”

“I’m sorry?” I offered and tried to end the conversation by helping Sonia to her feet.

“Sorry won’t cut it.  That was this year’s must have present.”

“Ah.”

“Ah?  AH!?  You spineless twit of a man, that’s Jeff’s Christmas  BUGGERED!”

And so, to prevent Jeff being buggered I dragged my drunken wife to the car and bundled her into the passenger seat all the while cursing the fact that her family were a bunch of bloody loonies.

I think it warrants capitals now.

BLOODY LOONIES.

“Do you want me to show you the way to Toys R Us or not?” she said folding her arms in the universal female signal for don’t push your luck any further I don’t care how drunk I am I demand reshpect.

“Sorry,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it.  “Which way.”

“Left,” she said and was asleep before we reached the end of the block.

Fifteen minutes later and stubbornness had set in.  I had a pretty good idea of where the shopping centre was and I followed my instincts as Sonia snored next to me.  Thirty minutes later and I knew I would have to wake her and ask for directions.  Forty five minutes later and I pulled the car over to the side of the road.  Fifty minutes later I had to lick my finger and stick it in her ear to get a reaction.

Her body tried to rise up into the air to escape the schoolboy trick but the seatbelt held her down.

“Ow, my tits,” she screamed and slapped me hard.

“I’m lost,” I said clenching and unclenching my jaw, I thought I might be able to taste blood.  “Which way?”

“Fuck off,” she dragged a sleepy hand over her face hoisting the skin up and down in an apparent attempt to focus.

“Sonia, there’s like ten minutes til it closes.  Please.  If not for me then for Jeff.”

“That little perv.  I dunno.  Have we got any booze in this car I’m getting a hangover?”

I shook my head in spite of the fact I knew there were a couple of cans in the back and stamped on the accelerator.

There was a horrendous thump and the car slid on the snow.

“What was that?” Sonia screamed.

I looked around but couldn’t see anything in the dark.  

“Probably just the ABS – it’s the brake on the car and the ice under the snow.  Which way?”

“What’s it worth?” she grinned then slid forward and kissed me on the cheek.

“What will it take?”

“To impress my family and redeem yourself in their eyes. Oh, I don’t know, the best Christmas present ever.”

“Those shoes you were looking at the other day,” I looked in the rear view mirror but still couldn’t see anything out there.

“Have some respect.  They weren’t just shoes.  They were Manolo Blahniks.”

“Wasn’t he a Cuban dictator?” I checked the side mirrors and moved the car forward but it just slid again.  I cut the engine.

She rolled her eyes, “Respect?”

“I’ll buy them.”

She clicked her tongue.

“How do I know you will?”

“I will.”

“But how do I know?”

“I will, come on.”

“Hang on,” she said and opened the glove compartment, discarding a biro before pulling out the CD marker pen that was in there.  “Lift your shirt.”

“No, no that’s a permanent pen,” I said waving a weary hand.  “I won’t be able to wash it off.”

Two minutes later I was walking towards the Toys R Us with the words I PROMISE TO BOY MY WAFE NICE SHOOOOES MINOLO BLHNKS drunkenly scrawled across my gut.  Sonia had pointed behind us.  I had turned around and there it was.  We were practically in the car park.  

As I walked away from the car the snow slowly sneaked into my shoe, soaking my sock and letting a icy chill spread over my already frosty foot.

“Help,” said a voice from just to the side of the road.  “Please… ”

I slid over and could see the outline of a man in the ditch by the side of the road.  As I came closer the limited light revealed a security guard propped up on his elbow in the snow, blood dripping form his forehead and landing in a pool just beneath his name badge.  His Toys R Us name badge.

“Did you see the car drive away?” he asked.

I spent the longest three seconds of my life weighing up the pros and cons of coming clean.  The matter was decided when my gaze was caught by someone in Toys R Us bringing down the shutters.

“I did but I didn’t get the number plate, it’s too dark.”

And so I helped Neil, as his name turned out to be, to his feet and helped him hobble his way to the store.  I helped him call his colleagues for help, helped him inside the store.  I helped him with a cup of tea and helped encourage him in his idea to reward me in some way.  Finally I helped myself to a certain PowerFormers toy I had my eye on, bid him goodbye and returned to the car.

The car’s windows were steamed and I opened the back door with a certain sense of trepidation.  A sense that was rewarded as several empty cans of lager clacked onto the ground as I opened the door.

My darling wife was passed out pissed in the back of the car behind the driver’s seat.  I took one look at her, rolled my eyes and carefully placed the PowerFormers toy in the footwell behind the passenger seat, far away from her grasp.

There was just enough time to get back to the house get the damn thing wrapped and get to bed.  I turned the engine over, gunned the car and heard a crunch as Sonia rolled forward onto the PowerFormers toy, crushing it without interrupting her sleep for a moment.

I stared out of the window, sighed,  then lifted my shirt, spat on my fingers and started rubbing at the marker pen on my belly.  There was no way she was getting those fucking shoes.