The Winter Festival Problem

One morning, I was woken at just after 6.30 by a hammering on my back door.

 

‘Who can that be?’ I wondered, before realising that, of course, it must be Alun, as he’s the only other resident of the island and is constantly waking me first thing in the morning for no good reason.

 

I quickly dressed and hurried downstairs to find Alun in an agitated mood.

 

“It’s the council Jed,” he said, “they’ve banned Christmas.”

 

“Banned Christmas?” I said, “Are you sure?” It seemed highly unlikely. “Can they do that?”

 

“Yes Jed. They’ve replaced Christmas with a Winter Festival. They’ve sent us a leaflet. Here look.” He held up a glossy booklet, which read: ‘The Winter Festival is here’ and had pictures of smiling people on the front cover.

 

“But why would anyone ban Christmas? It’s harmless fun, it’s traditional and gives people a day off work.”

 

“Exactly Jed, fun, time off work and traditional activities are all things the mainland council opposes. The council stands for misery, hard work and new, ill-judged ideas.”

 

“Well, I’m sure that’s not what they say. How do they justify it?”

 

Alun scanned the leaflet, which was several pages long. I could see by the pain on his face that every corporate word was agony to a mind used to the freedom of island life.

 

“They say Christmas is offensive to religious minorities.”

 

“But we’re a religious minority and the council offend us all the time.” (As the island’s Priest of all Faiths, Alun’s religious leadership veers from atheism to whatever he happens to believe at the time, but usually it results in another confrontation with the council. It happens so often I could practically write a book about it).

 

“We obviously don’t complain enough, Jed. That’s the problem with politics, if you don’t make your voice heard they ignore you. We lose out because we’re so quiet and subservient.”

 

I looked at the leaflet again. “It’s amazing the council has the money to send out these things, when other perfectly reasonable requests for services are turned down. (to this day we haven’t been given the helicopter we asked for). I thought the council was cutting down on non-essential expenditure. That’s what they said when they closed down the hospitals, schools and libraries. And yet they still have money for glossy, pointless, corporate drivel.”
“That’s not all Jed. This arrived in the post.”

 

Alun handed me another letter, addressed to ‘Jess and Ellen, Happy Island, nr. the mainland’.

 

I knew what it was, the council sent us one every year, always addressed to Judd and Elaine or Ned and Helen, or some similar distortion of our names.

 

“A Christmas card?” I said, incredulous. “The council have sent us a Christmas card, the same day they wrote to tell us Christmas is cancelled. What insanity is this? The council hasn’t gone Lib Dem again has it?”

 

“It’s a coalition, Jed. That way each party can blame the other and whoever you vote for the coalition remains in power. It’s called democracy.”

 

“They get worse,” I said. In fact they don’t, the mainland council is consistently bad, but as a writer I’m used to using this sort of terminology to add to the drama and tension in a story. ‘Crime in this city has hit a plateau’ is not the opening line of a hit crime-thriller. These are really useful writing tips, you should be taking notes you know.

 

I took the card from Alun. It showed a picture of a penguin in a Santa Claus outfit throwing a snowball across a wide stretch of water. Inside it read: ‘Reaching out to our island-dwelling friends at Christmas’, with Christmas crossed out and Winter Festival written in in bright red letters.

 

“Typical council mentality,” Alun said, “They think throwing things at us is reaching out.”

 

“It’s signed by our councillor. Councillor Robin Yule, that’s ironic.”

 

“No it’s not Jed, it’s fitting. Robin Yule sounds like robbing you all, and he’s a councillor. That’s not ironic, it’s spine-chillingly accurate.”
“Yes, that’s true, but I was referring to the surname, Yule, and the fact that he’s banning Christmas.”

 

“Jed I’m bored of this conversation. If this was a story people would’ve stopped reading by now. Action is what we need.”

 

Alun was right, of course. Even though my life isn’t a story, I find it life enhancing to seek to make the miniature of my daily routine into a gripping page turner. Of course, this does mean that making the toast always becomes a life and death struggle through smoke and flames and the simple act of taking a bath becomes a giant-squid-wrestling, all-action, underwater adventure. It’s the main reason I rarely bathe these days.

 

Anyway, I digress.

 

“I know,” I said, “I’ll phone the council and complain. That always develops the story.”
“The story?”

 

“Sorry, I mean the real-life-situation. Look, there’s a number on the Winter Festival card.”

 

However, nobody answered and I got put through to an automated voice-message.

“Press 1 to complain about the council’s services, Press 2 to complain about the council’s taxes, press 3 to complain about the cancellation of Christmas, or press 4 to complain about always getting an automated message.”

 

I pressed 3. However, I was simply transferred to another automated message.

 

“The council is unable to answer your call right now, as all staff are on Christmas holiday until 15th January. Sorry, I mean Winter Festival holiday. If you leave a message nobody will get back to you for at least a month.”

 

The message was followed by girly giggling, a clear sign that it was recorded during the office Winter Festival party.

 

“Well, that’s that then,” I said. “Christmas is cancelled and we can’t even complain about it until the new year.”

 

“There’s only one thing for it Jed. We’ll have our own Christmas here, on Happy Island.”

 

“But Christmas is banned. You’ve seen the leaflet.”

 

“But the empty house isn’t covered by the Christmas ban, Jed. Technically it’s a ‘church’ and we can hold any religious activities we like. Look, on page 247 of the leaflet, it specifically says that the ban doesn’t extend to religious establishments.”

 

“What religious activities do you have in mind? You’re not going to give a service are you?” Alun’s sermons were mainly incoherent rants against the mainland council which could last several hours at a time. I wasn’t looking forward to a Christmas spent listening to Alun ranting. After all, Christmas is special, it shouldn’t be exactly the same as any other day.
“No Jed. We’re going to have a party. A Christmas party, not a Winter Festival party, and we’re going to invite everyone.”

 

“Everyone? What, even mainlanders?”

 

“Yes Jed, even mainlanders.  It’s winter festival, a time of forgiveness and acceptance.”

 

“You mean it’s Christmas, a time of forgiveness and acceptance.”

 

“Christmas, yes Jed, that’s exactly what I mean. We must defend our right to have a traditional Christmas booze-up and ensure that Jed Christ didn’t die in vain.”

 

And so we set about planning the biggest Christmas party our island has ever seen. We invited the boatman, the residents of the other islands in our archipelago and our friends on the mainland.

 

“Should I invite the Daleks?” I asked, as we sat writing out our invitation list. The short-lived TV spin-off Dalek Island had been filmed on Happy Island and we were still in touch with many of the cast and crew.

 

“Yes, definitely Jed, everyone is welcome, even the most evil race in the galaxy is invited for Christmas.”

 

“Perhaps we should invite the council as well, then.”

 

Alun shot me a cold look, and I didn’t repeat the suggestion.
Quite why we went to the trouble of writing an invitation list I’m unsure, as rather than fuss around with writing out invitations or personalising invites in any way, we simply

emailed everyone in our contact lists.

 

We watched our email in-boxes with eager anticipation. Would anybody come? Perhaps the council was right, perhaps Christmas was old hat, perhaps nobody wanted to wear party hats, tell corny old jokes and visit people they haven’t seen for a year.

 

The first reply did not bode well.

 

“It’s from Professor Mary Beard,” said Alun. “She can’t make it, she’s doing Celebrity Sumo Wrestling for Channel 5. The final’s on Christmas Day.”

 

“That’s a real shame,” I said. Of all the mainlanders we knew, Professor Beard is the only one we happily welcomed as one of our own. She could easily be mistaken for an off-mainlander. Indeed, in many ways she is an island unto herself.

 

“But there’s good news,” Alun added. “She’s sending us 200 copies of her History of Happy Island to give away as Christmas presents.”

 

“Excellent. And with everyone getting a present from Mary that means we don’t have to bother buying any. I was wondering what we were going to do about that.”

 

In truth it wasn’t such a generous offer as it sounded. After a string of best-selling historical books about ancient Greece and Rome, Professor Beard’s History of Happy Island had been a disappointing flop, with not one single copy sold outside of our island. Her home and office were both full to bursting with piles of unsold books.

 

We spent the next few days making preparations for Christmas. We gave the boatman a long list of provisions to fetch for us. We were sent a dozen barrels of Happy Island beer from the brewery who had owned the short-lived Happy Island pub. Mrs Tulperry from Tulperry island knitted us a selection of Christmas decorations, including Santa hats for my geep and wooly mammoth costumes for the elephants. Our little world was suddenly looking incredibly festive.

 

At last it was Christmas Day. Alun woke me early to finish preparations and we nervously waited to see who would come. First to arrive, on a private boat, were Tommy Rascalous and a group of the dirtiest, nastiest gangsters in the whole of the United States, including Vito Sordid, the man who had once woken me with a knife to my throat, our former neighbour and mass murderer Joey Semanster, as well SwiftPaw Luke, Tony Patrino and Slo Mo Morris. Luckily they were not only vicious gangsters but also the best partiers in the world.

 

“We’ve bought a few cases of finest whiskey,” Tommy said by way of introduction. “It was either bring them here or pay tax on them, and we don’t do taxes.”

 

Alun immediately became best of friends with Tommy, and they spent much of Christmas discussing ways Alun and I might be able to avoid paying the mainland council tax.

 

In addition to the whiskey the gang provided security for the event, though we gave them strict instructions not to actually kill anyone, unless they were from the mainland council.

 

Throughout the day people arrived from the other islands in our archipelago. Mrs Tulperry arrived with presents for myself and Alun, hand-knitted jumpers which would have fitted perfectly, if only Alun and I had thought to be three-armed giants.

 

Terrence and his friend the Other Terence arrived from Oblong Island, though after helping themselves to more than their fair share of food and drink, they retreated unsociably into a corner and muttered to themselves about better parties they could have gone to instead.

 

At 3 0’clock a big party arrived on the mid-afternoon boat with over 40 people from the Dalek Island team, including Daleks, cameramen, the director, designers and writers. Amongst them I spotted Jane. Fuck, I hadn’t expected Jane to come.

 

I greeted her as she stepped off the boat.

 

“It’s you,” I said.

 

“It’s me,” she said.

 

“I didn’t think you’d come,” I said.

 

“I was surprised to be invited.”

 

“Oh, we invited everyone in our email lists.”

 

“Everyone? Even people you don’t like?”

 

“Well, if we excluded everyone Alun didn’t like it wouldn’t be much of a party.”

 

She looked suddenly sad. “Oh. I had thought that you invited me because…”

 

Her sentence drifted away.

 

“Of course I’m glad to see you,” I said, “I didn’t really think you’d come, otherwise I’d have…”

 

My sentence also drifted away. Words were suddenly difficult to come by, like I always find when I’m writing the more emotional scenes in my novels. I’m much better at murder scenes.

 

“You could have phoned.” She said.

 

I didn’t know what to say. “You always said if we couldn’t live together then there was no point seeing each other.”

 

“I also said there’s no reason we shouldn’t live together.”

 

We had, without really thinking about it, drifted apart from the rest of the Dalek Island gang, who were on their way to the empty house, no doubt already up to their eyeballs in serious partying. Jane and I found ourselves walking along the cliffs about Refrigerator Bay. We sat down on the edge, gazing at the unique beauty of 150 abandoned fridges glinting in the fiery embers of a dying sun. (‘Surely the most beautiful sight in the known universe’, The Off-Mainlander magazine.)

 

“But you said you had to live on the mainland for work.”

 

“I do,” she said. “But there’s no reason you can’t move to the mainland. Or at least commit to staying every other week. After all you’re a writer, you could live anywhere. You’ve never even been to visit me.”

 

“I know, it’s just…”

 

She didn’t let me finish. “You’ve never even been to the mainland. I’ve never understood, you’re a grown man, 38 years old, you’ve never made the five mile trip.”

 

I struggled to find the answer, and then gave up because I found a tongue being pushed down my throat.

 

We kissed for a long time.

 

“We should give it a go.” She said.

 

“What does that entail?” I asked.

 

“It entails you growing up and making the journey to the mainland and coming to stay with me.”

 

I was quiet for a while, considering the enormity of what I was about to say.
“Okay, then,” I said eventually, “I’ll do it. I’ll come and visit you on the mainland.”