A Forumshire Christmas Carol

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Be a couple of hours, probably.

get on with it then

Petty closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Bugger it!" but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the buckies of the day, or the self righteous conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

When Petty awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque curved walls of his barrel. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of the Needlehole Clock struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve. It was past two, when the Muck n' Duck called last orders, when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve.

"Why, it isn't possible," said Petty, "that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. I haven't drunk enough buckie for that.”

He scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his tartan dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely cold.

Petty went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; but this was normal for him. Odo's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a  buckie hallucination, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it the buckie or not?"

Petty lay in this state until the chimes had gone three quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was past; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than give up buckie, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power.

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have passed out into unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter past," said Petty, counting with the aid of his fingers.

"Ding dong!"

"Half past!" said Petty.

"Ding dong!"

"A quarter to it," said Petty.

"Ding dong!"

"The hour itself," said Petty, triumphantly, "and bugger all!"

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. The curtains of his bed were drawn.

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, which was just as well as even a Spirit would have been assailed by that stench, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Petty, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them.

It was a suspicious figure – in that it looked suspiciously like Ambassador Amarie. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white however as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. It wore a tunic of the purest black, and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful and it was emblazoned with the legend 'cheeses are off topic'. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a jet of dark light, and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.

"Are you the Spirit, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked Petty.

"I am."

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

"So why the buggery do you look like Ambassador Amarie?" Petty demanded.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past. Who else but an Ambassador of the Dark Planet would have all the detailed records of all that is past."

"Whose Past?" inquired Petty with crabbit suspicion,

"Your past."

Petty, taking a swig from the buckie he kept by his bedside, then made bold to inquire what business brought her there.

"Your welfare," said the Ghost.

Petty expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest and a morning barrel of buckie would have been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately:

"Your reclamation, then. Take heed."

It put out its hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm.

"Rise. And walk with me."

The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.

“Oh no, fuck that," Petty remonstrated, "It'd freeze the balls off a brass monkey out there."

"Bear but a touch of my hand there," said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, "and you shall be beyond all such cares."

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open country road, with fields of heather on either hand. Needlehole had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground.

"Fucking hell!" said Petty clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was a bairn here."

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to Petty's sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten.

"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is that upon your cheek?"

Petty muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was bugger all; and begged the Ghost to lead him where she would.

"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.

"Remember it!" cried Petty with fervour -- "I could walk it pissed and often did."

They walked along the road, Petty recognising every gate, and post, and tree; until a school house appeared in the distance. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs wearing Rangers tops, who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, wearing Celtic tops. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other; “Fuck the Tims!” and were returned with “Fuck the Huns!”until the broad fields were so full of merry abuse and casual violence, that the crisp air laughed to hear it.

"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."

“Just as well,” mused Petty, “We lost 3-1 that year.”

"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."

“ I know,” said Petty, “the fucking PJ lovers.”

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
Petty's former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead.
He was not reading now, but walking up and down crabbitlyy. Petty looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.

It opened; and a girl, a little older than the boy, came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and often slapped him, addressed him as her "Dear, dear brother."

"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" she said, clapping her hands, and bending down to laugh. "To bring you home, home, home!"

"Home, Pretty?" returned the boy.

"Yes!" said Pretty, brimful of glee. "Home, for good and all. Home, for ever and ever. Paw is so much kinder than he used to be, he will hardly beat you at all! And you're to be a man!" said Pretty, opening her eyes in what might have been disbelief at the notion, "and are never to come back here as from now on Paw says its your round."

"You are quite a woman now, Pretty!" Petty exclaimed with some suspicion taking her in.

She clapped her hands and laughed, “I've had another boob job!” Then she began to drag him, in her eagerness, towards the door; and he, though loth to go, accompanied her.

A terrible voice in the hall cried. "Bring down Master Petty's box, there!" And in the hall appeared the Crabbitmaster himself, who glared on Master Petty with a ferocious condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour that ever was seen. Here he produced a decanter of curiously light buckie that Petty scorned at, and administered installments of these to the young people, much to Petty's crabbit annoyance as he could easily have drunk the entire decanter. And then he took Pretty to show her the schools collection of crabbit etchings. They were gone some time and the building took upon itself such a creaking and groaning as if a wild tempest were blowing through it, which was not far from the truth. Petty shook his head in crabbit disgust.

Eventually Master Petty's trunk being by this time tied on to the top of the chaise, they bade the schoolmaster, his hair ruffled and who now could barely stand upon his own feet for his knees were trembling so, good-bye right willingly; and Pretty winked at him and indicated he should call her, and getting into it, drove gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray.

"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered," said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"

"You what?" cried Petty. "A large chest maybe, bought and paid for I'll not gainsay, Spirit. And as quick to bed a man of position as a rat is up a drainpipe. As to delicate, only if the lioness at hunt is so. She tied me to a door once and used my ballsack as a dart board."

Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battle for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas time again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up.

The Ghost stopped at a certain buckie warehouse door, and asked Petty if he knew it.

"Know it!" said Petty. "Was I apprenticed here?"

They went in. At sight of a beautiful woman with an exquisite nose, sitting behind such a high desk, that if she had been two inches taller she must have knocked her head against the ceiling, Petty cried in great excitement:

"Why, it's Queen Tinuviel! Bless her buckie loving heart; it's Tinuviel before she left for Valinor!"

Come on Petty your leaving us hanging here

were is he anyway? We need his review

Petty if you are reading this, come back here this instant!

Its awfully quiet without him here

Yeah, where is he? I've even checked my fields. No "sign" of him.

Has Petty ever gone more than 2 days without posting before?

Perhaps he saw BOTFA and actually enjoyed it...

malickfan wrote:Has Petty ever gone more than 2 days without posting before?

Perhaps he saw BOTFA and actually enjoyed it...

Either that or he saw BOTFA and had a stroke brought on by buckie overload and crabbit

Hopefully everything is alright.

Sorry folks, RL and having to review BOFA got in the way- once I am fully recovered I will finish this off.

To be continued... next Christmas

Hope not I was enjoying that

Christmas is over, no Christmas music or stories until after next Thanksgiving.

We have a saying in fjordlandia that goes "Christmas lasts all the way to Easter." or something like that.

Yeah well, in England Easter is usually 2days after Christmas at the rate they are churning out Easter Eggs on the shelves !

Well its the same here... went into the local Walmart to find them stocking easter stuff already. I mean dang it ain't even February

There used to be a house near where I live that left it's Xmas decorations up til March-they covered the whole house and front garden in Christmas lights and displays and raised money for charity...then the Electricity bills got too much.

we had someone who did that also, but, not only did Electric Bills get to high but, some bugger knicked some of the static light displays, It was so pretty to look at that often buses would slow right down so passengers could see it. Its now an OAP Home.& sadly missed.

I will be finishing this eventually- got to much fun stuff for it not too- those who dont want to read out of season can read it next xmas- that at least gives me a reasonable time table to finish the bloody thing

I look forward to finishing the story next Christmas.

Gives me just about enough time to write it then!