Lynda

Early on Christmas morning, Simon Snodgrass sprang energetically out of bed and organised the stockings for his children. He fetched tea in bed for his wife, got dressed, prepared breakfast, and made sure that everything was ready. This year, he was determined that Christmas was going to be a success. Outside, he swept the front drive and chatted about the weather to his neighbour, Bill, who was heading up north to visit relatives later in the day.

Then he returned indoors, yawned elaborately, and mentioned to his wife that he might pop down to the local for a quick pint with the lads.

Fifteen minutes later, he arrived at his girlfriend Melanie’s flat on the other side of town. Melanie had threatened to go public on him if he didn’t eat Christmas lunch with her, and Simon had been unable to come up with any alternative plan. He was hoping he could get it over with quickly, then nip back home for the family dinner.

His hopes were dashed straight away, however, when Melanie opened the door in a cloud of black smoke and flood of tears. ‘It’s all gone wrong,’ she wailed. ‘The turkey’s still frozen and I’ve just set fire to the party hats.’ Simon gave her a hug, soothed her, offered to help and got in the way, then settled down to wait with a drink in front of the TV.

Two hours later, little progress had been made in the kitchen. ‘Look, I’ll have to dash home for an hour,’ Simon told her, looking anxiously at his watch. ‘I’ll be back by the time it’s ready, I promise.’

Back at his house, Simon met with a circle of expectant faces around the dinner table. His wife’s expression darkened. ‘Where’s my mother?’ she demanded. ‘Have you forgotten you were going to pick her up?’

Simon drove back across town at breakneck speed, then returned at the snail’s pace ordained by his mother-in-law. By the time he had delivered her safely to the house and eaten what should have been his second Christmas dinner, which was dry, overcooked, and swimming in gravy, it was three in the afternoon.

‘Er, I think there’s a problem with the car,’ he improvised, glaring at his mother-in-law and daring her to contradict him. ‘I’m just going to pop outside for a while and take a look.’

Driving back towards Melanie’s, he fleshed out the bare bones of his plan. He would pretend he had taken the car for a test run, and that it had unexpectedly broken down on him.

Melanie’s dinner was waiting for him when he arrived. The turkey was somehow burnt on the outside whilst still raw in the centre, and the vegetables resembled nothing so much as lumps of coal. And it was cold.

‘How can I get it right if you don’t turn up when you say you will?’ she complained, standing over him to make sure he finished every last mouthful. Simon gritted his teeth and swallowed dutifully. At last, he was approaching the only part of the day that promised him any pleasure – an exchange of ‘special’ presents followed by hot sex.

But as Melanie tore at the wrapping paper and he caught a glimpse of woolly tartan, Simon realised he had made a fatal error. These were the slippers intended for his mother-in-law. Which could only mean that she was now opening a package containing crotchless panties and a vibrator.

The prospect was unbearable. ‘Wait,’ he cried, snatching the half-opened parcel from Melanie’s hands. Another breakneck journey found him parking at the end of his road and creeping through the neighbour’s garden to his own back door. The family were slumbering in front of the TV, presumably awaiting his return before commencing the ritual of present-giving, and Simon was able to sneak along the hallway to the Christmas tree and exchange the identically-wrapped gifts unobserved.

On his way back through the gardens, he was forced to bolt for cover as his neighbour Bill came outside for a smoke. The only place offering sanctuary was the garage where Bill kept his camper van. Careless to leave the door open, thought Simon, slipping into the narrow gap between garage wall and vehicle. But Bill wasn’t so careless at all. On finishing his cigarette, he walked decisively up to the garage door and turned a key in the lock. Then he walked away.

What seemed like several hours later, Simon was blue with cold. His mobile was still in his car, and no-one seemed to hear his occasional cries for help. He wished he’d overcome his embarrassment and called out to Bill before it was too late. Eventually, he forced the lock of the camper van and climbed inside in search of blankets or anything to keep him warm. But just as he found what he was looking for in an overhead locker, he twisted round suddenly, thinking he had heard a sound. Something very heavy tumbled out of the locker with a crash and hit Simon on the head.

When he woke up, the camper van was moving and the rear window offered a view of motorway traffic. With a sinking feeling, Simon recalled Bill’s mention of the journey ‘up north’ he would be making later in the day. He was about to emerge from his nest of blankets and beg to be taken home, when he took in the content of the conversation he could hear between Bill and his wife in the front. Something about talking to ‘that pillock next door’ earlier in the day.

Bill and his wife didn’t find it necessary to break their journey until Watford Gap services, which even Simon knew to be a long way north of Watford. Collapsing through the rear doors of the van, his legs numb with pins and needles, he made a beeline for the cash machine.

‘Insufficient funds available’ said the screen, as Simon remembered lending his card to his teenage daughter earlier in the week. He wandered desolately into the food court, tired, hungry, thirsty, dying for a pee, and wondering how he could raise enough cash for the journey home. There was nothing of any value in his wallet, and his only possessions were a pair of crotchless panties and a super-size, top-of-the-range, ‘realistic’ vibrator, still in its packaging.

Afterwards, he couldn’t quite be sure what had possessed him to approach the plain-clothes policewoman. His excuse of ‘she looked the kind of person who might want to buy one of these’ hadn’t gone down very well in the police station. How was he supposed to have known there was an international sex toy smuggling ring operating out of Watford Gap?

He thought things couldn’t get any worse, but then a message came through from his wife that he had to be joking if he thought she’d stand bail and not to bother coming home because he would find all the locks changed.

This was followed by a similar message from Melanie, who appeared to have been calling from the same number as his wife. Simon didn’t even want to start thinking about the implications of that one.

Then he discovered he had to share a cell with a 20-stone lorry driver called Mick, who misunderstood Simon’s joke about sex toys on his charge sheet and thought he was some kind of paedophile. Before he knew it, Simon was on the floor, his nose bleeding from a sudden encounter with Mick’s tattooed knuckles.

‘Happy Christmas, pervert,’ Mick growled, standing over Simon and unzipping his fly.

As he felt a warm, pungent, rain of urine splattering around him and drenching his clothes, Simon promised himself that next Christmas would be different. He would go and spend three weeks in a monastery if necessary – anything to avoid a repetition of this annual nightmare. But a part of him knew that it was useless to fight against such deep-rooted tradition. If only he had been born in another country, in another historical time, or even on another planet – anywhere that didn’t keep ruining his life by insisting on the celebration of Christmas each year.

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