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

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.

Rudolph Redux
    S oon after what I now refer to as my ‘Holiday Incident’ I started writing
‘Happy Holidays?’
in cards instead of
‘Merry Christmas!’

    My wife was screaming out of the landing window.

    ‘You are not putting that monstrosity on
my
roof.’

    I looked down at Rudolph standing two feet tall next to me. His paint was peeling, one antler had broken off leaving only a long, sharp, shard pointing straight up and a long length of cable protruded from his worn posterior that, when plugged in, would illuminate him for the whole neighbourhood to see.

    Of course that wasn’t the thought going through my head as I hung from the roof of my house, the electrical cord that was