Donovan’s World

DON DONOVAN

More and more it appears to have become fashionable, among the computer savvy, to create a catch-all letter to accompany the obligatory annual Christmas card. Where, in past times, a short, hand penned, message might impart family news to absent friends and relations, we now receive (with some outstanding but rare exceptions) litanies of banal irrelevance such as this:-

Dear All,

Well another year has passed and we’re all that much older. But as Jack says “As long as we’ve got our health what else matters?’

The highlight of the year was our camping trip up north where we stayed in a rented caravan in a bay by the sea. Unfortunately Bobby cut his foot on a broken beer bottle - not badly but enough to have him limping for a couple of weeks. I can’t understand how these faraway ‘paradises’ manage to have plastic bags, condoms, drink cans and dog poos littering the place. The caravan leaked like a holey bucket but can’t complain, the first four days were really hot and sunny.

Jack got all ready to have his hip done in May but the op was postponed until July. Then he was told he couldn’t be done until September at which point they sent a letter to say that he’s been dropped off the waiting list and would have to go back to Dr. Khan, our GP. Jack’s fed up underneath but he puts on a brave face and only gets really grumpy when he can’t find his aluminium crutch - the kids keep hiding it.

Other events on the wider family front: Maureen had her veins done (we went private after I won $500 on Lotto); gran had a run in with the audiologist because her hearing aid wasn’t working properly then they had the nerve to tell her that she was wearing it not only upside down but in the wrong ear! Oh, I forgot, Jack broke his wrist when his crutch went into the slots in a roadside drain at the local shopping centre. Brett (only three, bless him) put Nikki’s cellphone in the dishwasher, we tried to fix it with the hair drier but to no avail. Jack said it was a good thing as she stood a chance of getting RSI of the thumb from texting.

They still haven’t fixed that nasty bend up the road so we’ve had four more crashes through our front fence. None of the drivers was insured so, to get repairs done, it’s cost us $500 excess on our insurance policy each time. Needless to say, none of the crashers has stumped up.

We bought a new telly, one of those wide ones, and subscribed for Sky. Jack - whom we basically bought it for because he can’t get around very much - was quite rapt with it at first but now spends a lot of his time trying to get through to Sky on their help-line to complain about the number of times they repeat everything; he says they’ll be repeating the news next. Mind you, TVNZ’s not much better, they seem to spend all their time showing programmes about dogs, sick people’s fights against the odds, and people going round the neighbourhood decorating other people’s houses or digging up their gardens. What I would give to all singing round the piano like they used to do in Victorian times. Or give me a good book - I read the latest Grisham in July.

We buried somebody else’s tabby in the garden in August. Its body was all squashed on the road and it looked like our Tigger. Just after we’d buried it Tigger came through the cat door large as life so where the other one came from God knows.

Marcia went trekking in Nepal and came back with an unidentifiable disease. Peter is still in Mt. Eden and vows to clear his name (I know for certain that he didn’t do that warehouse). Tui went on a course on medical terminology so that she could get a job as a doctor’s receptionist/typist but chucked it halfway through because some of the words made her feel sick and, in any case, as she said, who would ever truly need to be able to spell ‘spondylolisthesis’? Pauline fell in love with the boy who picks up the rubbish sacks because she says he looks like Daniel Carter, I said why couldn’t she fall for the real thing as his prospects are better. She stopped talking to me for a few days until she got herself gobsmacked by the lad who collects the empty trolleys at Pak ‘n Save - he’s got more spots than the milky way and wears his hat back to front.

Jack and I will be on our own for Christmas Day this year as, one way or another, the kids are all doing their own things. I don’t mind really but it will be a bit quiet. Jack does love his family Christmas dinner though so I’m going to see if I can get a very small turkey - enough for just us and cold cuts on Boxing Day (the kids will all be busy again then) - and one of those shop-bought puddings. I’ve kept some five cent pieces to hide inside, I’ll wrap them in grease-proof this year as last year Jack broke his dentures on an old threepenny bit we’d found and they cost a lot to replace.

I hope they still have the Queen’s speech on Chrissy Day - Jack says Sky will probably repeat last year’s - he’s a dag sometimes with what he comes out with.

Anyway I hope you have a Happy Christmas and prosperous New Year. Any of you is welcome if you’re up this way - especially on Christmas Day.

Love

Marge.

PS We managed to buy all our Christmas grog this year on Fly Buys - good eh?

[ENDS]

©DON DONOVAN

DON DONOVAN

They’re licensing carol singers in Britain now by means of The Licensing Act 2003, a law (like that proscribing the smacking of children) that’s imprecise. People are asking at what point does an informal house-to-house carol-singing group become an organized public performance? Presumably when some misanthropic policeperson decides he or she is going to put the dampers on the waits.

Waits? You ask. Ah, that’s an old English term for carol singers who go from door to door. At the latter end of my first decade on this planet that’s what we Yuletide songsters were called. Britain - more precisely, south London - where I was born and lived until I was twenty-one, was struggling its way through the middle of a war that we still stood a chance of losing, and although, by Chistmas 1943, the blitz was over we continued to sleep in air raid shelters, there were still gaps in the streets where houses had once been, still a bleak poverty of clothing, transport and food shortages. (I had a friend who came running up the road one day breathlessly boasting that he’d had dreamed of an orange in technicolor last night and could taste it!)

Thus at the darkest time of year, when the sun set before 4.00 pm and chill northerly winds presaged the frightful cold of January and February to come (those Russian generals of Czar Nicholas I, Janvier et Février, who, as they did Napoleon, tore the heart out of Hitler’s panzers and wehrmacht and helped to free us from fear in 1945) we would gather in the street, a scruffy quartet of urchins clad in threadbare coats, hand-knitted balaclavas and mittens, our knees, bare below shorts, purple with the cold, and set off to bring tidings of great joy round the neighbourhood.

We would gather at the front door of ‘Mon Repos’ or ‘Dunroamin’ and launch into a couple of verses of ‘We Three Kings’, ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ or ‘Good King Wenceslas’. Having sung lustily to the blank and unresponding door, the boldest of us would knock and ask ‘Any money for the carol singers?’ More often than not we waits waited until, after a more demanding knock and louder request we might be rewarded with one of three responses. Payment, rejection or - nothing.

Payment might be just a penny but at best sixpence (up to five cents) with which we would be content. If we were extraordinarily lucky there might be a bit of Christmas cake or a mincemeat pie each - but very, very rarely. Rejection could be quite frightening; it might involve a red faced old misery-guts holding on to the collar of an eager terrier, and warning that if we didn’t clear off now the police would be called! (Our response might be that one of the gnomes in his front garden might be headless next morning but on the whole we were a law-abiding bunch).

The worst we could suffer was a complete lack of reaction from the residents even though we could see lights through cracks in their blackout curtains. This might result in us singing another verse of ‘While Shepherds Watched’ until, dispirited, we’d move on to the next front door.

Much carolling was simultaneously going on all round the town and no doubt got right up the noses of many citizens but we must remember that it was spontaneous entertainment rendered at a time when there was no television, few radio stations, newspapers that might have only eight pages, and rationing that embraced everything from the 40 watt light bulb through meat, cheese, butter (from New Zealand - all that way passing wolf packs of U-boats) to bread, sweets and baking ingredients. As I said, we were the bringers of joy to the hungry.

Although I know that they still do it in the UK, I’ve never heard a door-to-door carol singing group in New Zealand. But hallowe’en sends children trick or treating from house to house every year. And although what was once All Hallows’ Eve has now transformed into a godless thing I hope it continues because children need these little rites of passage to reinforce the wonder of growing up.

But I fear that New Zealand, which always copies the worst of overseas practices, will, at length, either require a licence to be held for trick or treating (or carol singing if it ever returns) or will ban it altogether. At which point our children will be forced on to Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel or maybe will just turn to more sinister assaults on their neighbours at earlier ages.

Not much changes for the better.

[ENDS]

©DON DONOVAN

DON DONOVAN (With apologies to C. Dickens)

Ebenezer Cullen took his melancholy meal in the back dining room of his melancholy Molesworth Street tavern, chewing exhaustively upon tasteless meats, over-cooked greens and under-done potatoes. He looked around the room and smiled wryly to himself; he was the only one there, all his friends had deserted him, but he didn’t care.

The waitress brought him a small beehive-shaped mound covered with a gelatinous yellow substance.

What’s this?’ he grumped.

‘Christmas pudding, sir.’ Said the woman, ‘With custard. For afters.’

‘Oh, it’s nearly Christmas again, is it? I didn’t realize; you’ve started early again.’

‘Yes, sir, and if you don’t mind this year I’ll spend Christmas Eve with my husband and children.’

‘Yes, I do mind.’ he replied. ‘I work, you work.’

‘Yes, Mr Cullen. With respect, sir, may I ask: is it true that you have lots and lots of our money but you don’t want to give any back?’

‘What do you mean “our money”? It’s my money, mine, d’you hear? And it’s been safe because, unlike you, I haven’t squandered it.’ He looked sad and added, reluctantly, ‘But I suppose I might give a little back - just to celebrate next year’s election victory. You’ll have to wait and see’

Blinking back her tears, the waitress removed herself.

That night Ebenezer Cullen had three dreams. The first featured a ghostly young man in tattered clothes. He was holding his pockets inside out. They were empty. ‘I am the ghost of tax cuts past.’ he intoned. ‘I am on the minimum wage and yet you stole from me one dollar in every five that I earned. You wallowed in my money claiming I would have spent it unwisely…’ As his voice faded his image merged with the red and white striped wallpaper of Ebenezer’s bed chamber.

The old skinflint, half awake, felt under his pillow. The bag of cash was still there. He smiled to himself. Those under-done potatoes had given him indigestion. He fell into a restless slumber, wondering how he could find a convincing reason not to give any of the hoard away.

Some time later, he was awoken by yet another ill-formed figure. This time it was that of the waitress. She held a small child in her arms, two more tugged at her apron and a small wizened man, old before his time, stood slightly behind her.

‘I am the ghost of tax cuts present.’ She wailed. ‘You take and take and take from us, force me to go to work to earn enough money to pay a woman to look after my children, and force my labourer husband to do back-pocket jobs and break the law because otherwise we would be penurious.’

‘Law breakers, eh,’ chuckled Ebenezer Cullen, ‘I know where you work, woman, I’ll have my lackeys at the IRD on to you. Be off you snivelling wretch and take your brood with you!’

As they evanesced into the corner of his cobwebby bedroom Ebenezer rolled over and switched on his 20 watt reading light. Its beam fell upon the signed portrait of his leader, the Photoshop one used in her election poster, who gazed at him sphinx-like.

‘That told ‘em, my President-in-Waiting;’ he crowed, ‘let them eat kumara! They might mistake it for a tax cut!’

He felt under his pillow. The bag had grown bigger in the just the short time between the arrival of the first and the most recent ghosts. He turned off the light and snuggled under his red and white striped duvet. Soon he was dreaming of himself and his leader climbing an Everest of treasury bills until, panting they reached the top. Stopping only to photograph each other, they started down towards a sea of faces who were pleading ‘Give some back, give some back…’

Out of the crowd arose a familiar ghost. ‘I am the ghost of real tax cuts future.’ It said, ‘And my name is Tiny Tim English.’ He was holding up the now engorged plastic bag of money.

Ebenezer Cullen felt under his pillow, ‘My money, MY money…’ He gasped.

‘…will be my money soon, ‘said Tiny Tim English, ‘and, bit by bit, I shall give it back to the peasants. You see, Ebenezer, it never was your money, it was always theirs and all you ever did was steal it from them and put it under your pillow.’

Tiny Tim English’s shade slowly disappeared until only his laughing face was left. His eyes grew larger until, reflected in them was the approving face of Bob ‘Key’ Cratchit.

‘Don’t be too hard on him, Tiny Tim.’ Said Bob, ‘His only sin was bad timing. Shove a used candle in the plastic bag and give it back to him; as long as he can put something under his pillow he’ll be happy.’

One year later Ebenezer Cullen disappeared into an obscurity of overseas postings and was never seen again.

©DON DONOVAN