It Always Rains on Sundays (61 page)

It's Cynthia I'm worried about – don't say I didn't try to warn her. I'm only glad I'm well out of it I'll tell you.

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11:00pm. CHRISTMAS DAY. What a wonderful day! Don't you worry, there's more than Cynthia can have a good time – not like last year that's for sure. Cynthia short-tempered as usual, the whole place filled with smoke. Everybody sat in a row watching boring repeats on TV – all the time just waiting for her to explode.

Mind you, Christmas or not it'd take a lot more than that to melt her cold heart – about who's having the kids I'm meaning. Her way or no way, we ended-up having this almighty big row over the phone, I said ‘Children that are emotionally scarred by a broken marriage (a situation not of their own choosing I might add) ravaged by constant rows and domestic upheaval. They are at least entitled to a few days of normality.'

Too late she'd already slammed down the phone.

Just as I thought she's no answer for that one.

Finally, just to settle the matter once and for all we'd no other option but to go to arbitration, e.g. (we ended-up tossing a coin). Fine by me – for once I got lucky, as things turned out I ended up having both kids on Christmas day! Okay, so far so good, the only downside is Cyn gets to have them all day Boxing Day. After that it gets a bit more complicated, that also means I can pick them up after six p.m. to sleep-over back at Stoney Bank Street. Okay, then we come to New Year's Day, that's my day too, however that doesn't necessarily include Jamie, the only stipulation there is that it doesn't happen to fall on a nice sunny day when he's playing football with his mates. Any day inbetween, in that case it's okay to visit each other's house's, but only until dusk. In that case it's
okay to stare through lower windows, proviso being that the other party leave the curtains open, making prior arrangements over the phone.

Even the weather, it just shows – just to top everything it started snowing, big white feathery flakes, falling thick and fast covering everything, pretty soon the scene resembled a Victorian Christmas card. Then, another nice surprise is Thelma phoning me up ‘Guess what, Eric's going away for two whole days!' she yelps. It turns out he's spending Christmas with his twin-brother Arnold (hard to imagine, right). TWO ERIC'S! Eeek! That's all we need – grown-up identical twins, that's really weird. Thelma refused to go point-blank. He lives on a big estate in the far North of Scotland, growing fir-trees, thousands of them as far as the eye can see. Mind you I don't blame her. No TV or anything (he still uses oil-lamps). Talk about having a wild time. She's never been so bored in her whole life. All they ever did is get steadily drunk on dubious home-brew that fetched on a blistering headache. Usually ending up having deep meaningful discussions all about the merits of nature-based fertilisers. Once the ferrets had been fed that was it – she was more than happy to turn in.

She was fast asleep by nine o'clock every night.

All in all it's been fantastic! Just one big happy family, sitting round the holly-decked table – I'll say. Everybody
having a good time enjoying a traditional home-cooked Christmas dinner, roast-turkey with all the trimmings, wearing funny-hats, pulling crackers and suchlike. Then playing party games. Not to mention the unbridled excitement of opening presents. You'd laugh (ha ha) old Fe-Fo gave Jamie a big glove. Typical I thought – what's the good of one lousy glove, right? He was highly delighted – it turns out it's for playing baseball over in the States. Sure it is – if you say so I thought to myself.

Finally we all watched the Queen's speech on TV, so that was nice.

Finally we all trekked round to the Salvation Army hut for the Christmas carol-service. They had a real live donkey for the nativity (it isn't much like the proverbial ‘Little Town of Bethlehem' that you see on TV I thought). After that we all joined in, helping-out serving-up the traditional free Christmas-dinner, for what my mother likes to call ‘the less fortunate.' No surprises there of course. Let's face it I was already acquainted with quite a few –

Then later on we all went over to the park. Through the darkness everything looked really magical, myriads of coloured fairy-lights, from over in the High Street, twinkling through the snow-laden branches of the wintry trees. Lots of folks had the same idea, families mostly, couples hand in hand, kids sledging, throwing snowballs, chasing around and around with the dog.

Everybody looked really happy you could tell.

2:00am. Still partying over at DeLacey Street.

4:00am. Everything peaceful I can report.

6:00am. Lots of snow – I've been cruising around following the gritters. Looks as if we could be in for another nice day!