Oh, My Days!

 I packed Christmas away today. Having spent a rainy day yesterday making a jigsaw puzzle (the second I received for Christmas) I was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic with all the decorations. Besides, they’d been up for 3 weeks and that is quite enough, I think. I did leave the fairy lights on the stairs and landing, though, as they add a magical quality to the still dark Winter evenings. Now everything is neat and tidy again - and the sunshine even made a rare and welcome visit, breaking through the clouds and drizzle that have been order of the weather for a week now.  At lunch time, whilst I was waiting for some mushrooms to cook to go on toast, I was entertained by a squirrel who was determined, despite the high winds, to have its fill of sunflower seeds from one of the bird feeders! We have two squirrels in the garden. This is the chubby one, and there is some speculation that her chubbiness may be down a pregnancy. Anyway, 10/10 to her for determination and gripping skill.

 All done for another year, then? All that Christmas malarkey. How was yours? Ours was a quiet, calm and  gentle one. We scaled back a bit this year and the day was fine. Happy chats with the family over FaceTime, a nice bit of food (duck for Andy, nut roast for me), and then the Queen’s speech to kick off a TV/reading afternoon/ evening.  Best Christmas TV special programmes this year were, in no particular order:  1) The Repair Shop 2) Shaun the Sheep 3) Whitehouse and Mortimer Go Fishing 4) Ghosts 5) Call The Midwife All gentle and inoffensive viewing. The kind of TV that makes you go ‘Aaaah’ and raises a smile, and makes you feel all warm and happy inside. None of it interrupted by adverts, either, which is a big plus for me. I am feeling ever more discombobulated by TV that is interrupted by adverts. I can feel it messing with my concentration abilities, putting me on edge. I try to avoid advert TV as much as possible. Yesterday, I made a jigsaw puzzle that Andy gave me. He design

  We – Mrs Miggins and I - are standing outside Much Malarkey Manor, which is beautifully bedecked in all its Christmas glory. Fairy lights, holly boughs, garlands of flamingo, that kind of thing. The night air is laced with frost, and woodsmoke buffets and twirls from the chimney stacks. All is calm, all is bright. Except for the noise up on the roof which has brought us outside to investigate. ‘There is definitely someone up there,’ I say, peering into the darkness overhead. ‘Someone carrying a suspicious looking sack. A burglar!’ ‘Possibly. But possibly not,’ says Mrs Miggins. ‘It could be someone else,’ and she tips me a wink, suggesting the intruder could be Father Christmas. Either that, or she has something in her eye. ‘Ha!’ I say. ‘That old myth? That’s just for children, Mrs M. No, I bet it’s an opportunist thief using the guise of Father Christmas to go on a robbery spree. Well, he’s picked on the wrong house here,’ and I cast my eye around the garden for a suitable w

  Now, join me if you will, in thinking of the best place in the world, the place you’d like to be right NOW if a little bit of magic came your way and you could grab hold of its tail and be carried straight there. It might be a different country, for example, somewhere you’ve been on holiday or would like to visit because it looked good on a travel programme you saw a while ago. It might be somewhere closer to home, with people you haven’t seen for a while, or somewhere you’ve been unable to visit but has been a long-time favourite haunt. Or it might be something smaller but no less important to you, like a favourite chair, or a grassy tussock beneath a particularly magnificent tree. Or a stretch of deserted shoreline, a mountain peak, a bench sited on a gentle hillside. It might even be in a different time, the past or the future, for as we have all learned, time can bend and stretch and stop and start according to your circumstances and wishes. Anyway, you get the idea….have you cho

  Operation ‘Finish the Job and Let’s Go Home’ commences. After numerous calculations, Bambino has worked out that there are 26.9% of the population yet to be visited by Father Christmas and there are two hours and three minutes remaining to do the visiting if Father Christmas is to keep his promise to Mrs Christmas and arrive home on time. Oh, and to avoid the huge wail of disappointment that will resound around certain part of the world as dawn breaks. ‘There are nine of us in total, so if we spread out and each take a specified region, we can have this gig wrapped in less than an hour and a half,’ says Bambino. ‘Woah, hang on a minute,’ says Mrs Pumphrey. ‘You want us all to split up and do deliveries on our own?’ ‘Yes,’ says Bambino. ‘It seems a sensible use of the people power and time we have available to us. If you have a look at this time and motion graph I’ve drawn up then…’ ‘I can’t do THAT!’ says Mrs Pumphrey, who has anxiety issues and is easily sent into a tailspin

  The sleigh lands, Father Christmas leaps from the driving seat and he and Bambino greet each other like old friends. ‘How is it going, old chap?’ says Father Christmas. ‘Are we on schedule?’ ‘Pretty much,’ says Bambino, and he and Father Christmas go into a judgely huddle over the map and the mathematical equations. I rush forward to happily greet the hens. I am keen to know how they have been dealing with the visit of Inspector Spectre. However, I leap backwards when Inspector Spectre emerges from the sleigh looking a bit dishevelled and green around the gills because he isn’t the best of travellers. I fear he has come to arrest me and cart me off to the clink. Even worse, that the hens have grassed me up to save their own pimply skins. ‘It’s all right,’ says Mrs Miggins, seeing my alarm. ‘He’s not really an police Inspector. He’s Kenneth the Phantomime. Look – he might still be wearing his Inspector’s cloak but underneath he is wearing something more, well, Phantomimish…’

  And they are off! As predicted at the start of this sorry tale, Father Christmas’s sleigh has travelled a circuitous route and, as the gang of intrepid travellers head outside, it lands with a ‘THUNK!’ on the roof of the Manor. One of the reindeer’s hooves displaces a roof tile, which Father Christmas neatly sidesteps as it crashes to the ground. ‘One bump on the head is quite enough for this evening,’ he jokes. ‘Ahahahahahahaha!’ ‘I’ve plenty of bread sauce left,’ says Mrs Slocombe. ‘Just in case.’ Father Christmas claps his hands and sings a chorus of ‘Jingle Bells’ which summons the reindeer from the rooftop, and they land with a soft thud in the ever-deepening snow. ‘Climb aboard!’ calls Father Christmas. ‘Make yourselves comfy and please use the seatbelts provided. We are going to be travelling at a considerable speed.’ Missus’ Miggins, Poo, Slocombe and Pumphrey, Ptolemy Pheasant and Kenneth the Phantomime climb into the sleigh and fasten themselves in, tucking woolly

  The dining room at Much Malarkey Manor is in turmoil, even more turmoil than it witnessed at the Great Malarkey Bake Off 1999 when Mrs Pumphrey’s croquembouche was declared winner over Tango Pete’s spotted dick when everyone knew that she’d brought a load of profiteroles from M & S and got her friend, Doris the Spider, to spin the sugar decoration for her. Scandal wasn’t the word for it. Father Christmas is standing in the doorway of the dining room, still partially attired in the body bag whose zip has got caught in the fur trim on his coat. He is looking very much alive, red in the face like a shiny Christmas bauble, and verging on apoplexy. ‘WHAT IS GOING ON?’ he demands, voice a-booming and hat a-jingling. ‘Him!’ says Mrs Poo, pointing at Inspector Spectre. ‘He is what is going on! Turned up here accusing us all of the murder of Father Christmas!’ Father Christmas hops, in the style of a sack race, over to Inspector Spectre. ‘You foolish oik,’ he says. ‘Father Chris

  By process of elimination, Mrs Miggins knows that the time has come for her to face the   interrogation of Inspector Spectre. She wonders, briefly, if it would easier if she confesses to the killing of Father Christmas herself. She could be a Christmas Day martyr to the cause. Maybe, in years to come, someone would erect a statue to her in the grounds of Much Malarkey Manor. Something tasteful, yet striking. Something along the lines of Brittania – the fine figure of Mrs Miggins, draped in flowing bathrobe with a deerstalker on her head, a toasting fork in one wing, dustbin lid in the other, flanked by an armadillo. Yes, she can see it now – a magnificent tribute to her heroic sacrifice! But no – she is an honest hen and is not in need of public recognition. If she has done something wrong she will always admit it and apologise. This murder most horrid is nothing to do with her. Yet she has been giving it considerable thought, and the more she thinks about it, it wasn’t really the

  At 2.12 a.m (according to my watch which appears to have galloped through an hour at speed whilst I’ve been enjoying a large hot chocolate with whipped cream, nuts and a chocolate flake, along with a deep filled mince pie with extra orangey filling) the team from ‘A Wing And A Preyer’ return, having efficiently delivered presents to the entire population of children on the North AND South American continents. Job done! The bald eagle hands back the red button gadget and Father Christmas’s present sack with another curtsey and I thank him. ‘It has been an honour, Your Royal Highness,’ says the bald eagle, offering another curtsey. ‘I’m not actually Princess Anne…’ I say, and then ‘Ouch!’ as Bambino Bobble Wilson delivers a quick and sharp kick to my shin. The bald eagle smiles at my apparent regal eccentricities and takes his leave, his entourage flying close behind. Bambino and I stand on the docks and watch them head off into the starry night sky. ‘I don’t suppose such a s

  With three murder suspects now on his list, Inspector Spectre is wondering if he might be up for a promotion. He rather fancies being a Chief Inspector Spectre, or a Superintendent Spectre, which would be more appropriate because he is being rather super at all this. Wouldn’t quite fit with the pun on the word ‘spectre’ though. Perhaps he could be Superintendent Super? And then he remembers that he is, in fact, Kenneth the Phantomime, and instead feels a bit smug that no one has yet seen through his cunning disguise. The hens are in a huddle around one end of the dining table. ‘Just look at him,’ says Mrs Miggins. ‘Smug idiot. Thinking he’s pulled one over on us with his thinly veiled Inspector disguise.’ ‘Yes,’ says Mrs Pumphrey. ‘We don’t have to put up with his silly Phantomime ways, do we? This is all a farce. A debacle. A hoo-ha. In fact,’ she continues, rising to her feet and puffing out her magnificent bosoms, ‘I’m going to call him out on this. I’m going to send him pac

  I am standing with my bicycle and Bambino, the shot-gun riding cat, at the Albert Docks in Liverpool. I’ve been here before, way back in the day when Lord Malarkey and I were a-courting. He lived in Liverpool at the time and I remember him taking me for a tour of the city, showing me all the tourist attractions such as the Beatles’ Cavern, Paddy’s Wigwam (can you say that these days? Yes, you can – I’ve just checked on Wiki), and the very impressive museums and art galleries. He also introduced me to the Super Lambanana, which is not as louche as it sounds. This is the Super Lambanana… Liverpool was also the place where he got my children on side by plying them with the delights of Caesar’s Palace, sadly now closed but a most impressive eatery in its day. Anyway, here I am again, staring out at an expanse of water, in the wee small hours and wondering what kind of magic I need to conjure now to get this bicycle across the Atlantic Ocean. ‘I suppose,’ I say, ‘that I have to travel

  Inspector Spectre is rather chuffed he has now identified two suspects for the murder of Father Christmas. This gig is going way better than he expected, even though he has yet to wangle a free drink out of it. Mrs Poo and Mrs Slocombe are sitting at the dining-room table looking very miserable and wondering how they can cause a distraction and make their escape. Ptolemy Pheasant, in fact, is already edging his way doorwards. He has no idea why he is here. He only came for the Christmas Party after all. ‘Mr Pheasant!’ says Inspector Spectre. ‘You’re not leaving us, are you?’ ‘Not at all,’ says Ptolemy, edging his way back into the room. ‘I was just admiring the architrave around the edge of the door. In the style of ogee, I believe, or is it torus? It’s difficult to tell sometimes…’ And he adopts the stance of an absorbed individual pondering with fascination the intricacies of period architectural features. ‘It’s Wickes,’ says Mrs Miggins. ‘We had it redone during the summer

  Thankfully unaware of the on-going drama at Much Malarkey Manor, I am scooting along on my bicycle quite happily now. I am getting the hang of the shiny red button pushing which is proving to be a very efficient way of distributing presents to all the child-inhabited houses in every village, town and city through which I pass. I wish only that I could make better progress between each location and toy with the notion that maybe my resolution for the fast approaching Year of 2022 should be to improve my fitness levels. I don’t toy with it long. I’m not a fan of exercise and have managed without it fairly successfully for the past five decades or so. ‘I don’t suppose I could prevail upon you to do a bit of pedalling for a while?’ I say to Bambino as I heave my way up a particularly challenging incline. ‘In these shoes? I don’t think so,’ says Bambino Bobble Wilson. True, he is wearing a particularly attractive pair of Regency style Cuban heels in peacock blue velvet with ornate s