Sandra’s Christmas by Raymond Hopkins

We love Christmas, Sandra and me.  We love all its traditions, like mince pies, and getting presents, and stuff like that.  The best bit as far as I’m concerned is the swilling down the booze so I can’t remember what happened the  morning after, but Sandra says that’s not very healthy and I have to ease up a bit this year.

What she likes best is the eating.  She’s a good cook, is Sandra, and she always makes plenty of grub at Christmas so I can hardly stand afterwards, and have to go for a lie down, and miss the Queen’s speech, but that’s all right since Sandra always has a lie down with me, just for company like.  It’s a great way of getting rid of the excess calories.

This year, she thought we might have a bit of a change.  Everybody has turkey, she said, except in some places where they have ham, but that hardly counts.  A bit odd, I thought, thinking of the ham we sometimes get from the supermarket to make sandwiches with.  A couple of slices of that hardly seems like a Christmas dinner, know what I mean?  It’s probably a different sort of ham, said Sandra, and anyway, those places are probably a bit backward, up north somewhere, Santa Claus land, that sort of place.  She didn’t suppose they knew how to grow turkeys there.

Anyway, we weren’t going to have turkey, she said.  This year, we are going to have a bit of goose.  Well, when I heard that, I pinched her bum, which is always a nice thing to do, and something she looks forward to a lot.  In fact, it quite put her mind off Christmas dinner for at least a couple of hours, by which time I was starving, and ready for the main course, if you see what I mean.  Fish fingers it turned out to be, which isn’t exactly one of my favourites, but quick and easy anyway.  Just like Sandra, really.

After our experiences with the hens, I thought she might have gone a bit cool on poultry, but she said no, a goose is quite different.  We’ll not be looking for eggs, for one thing, and there’ll only be one bird, which we can fatten up between now and Christmas.  Easy.  All we need to do is feed it, and that’s no work at all, then kill it, I don’t know how, but Sandra will think of something, stuff it and eat it.  Lovely.

Except, what a surprise, it didn’t quite work out like that.  Oh, the feeding went all right.  Believe me, a goose knows how to eat.  The greedy little pig, excuse my French, never stops filling its face, and comes running to us every time we leave the house just in case we have a little something for it.  The trouble started on the day we came into the garden holding an axe.  I said Sandra would think of something, didn’t I?  Now I don’t think birds are very bright, but this goose seemed to have a dim understanding that an axe isn’t exactly nourishing.  To put it plainly, it refused to stand there and do an impression of Marie Antoinette.  Not that I’ve ever heard of Marie Antoinette, but Sandra said she was famous for losing her head when all about her were keeping theirs.  Something to do with Kipling, she said, but I’ve never kippled, so I didn’t really understand.

Anyway, this ungrateful bird, that’s the goose, not Sandra, after all we had done for it, not only refused to do the decent thing, it actually attacked us, and  I can tell you, when you’ve been attacked by a goose, you stay attacked.  That beak isn’t just for eating.  Talk about sharp, it should be against the Geneva Convention.  I used to know a Geneva, and she was a bit sharp too, but I have my doubts as to whether she deserved that goose.  Sandra just gave me one of her looks and I kind of guessed we were talking about two different things, so it was probably some other Geneva since I can’t remember the last name of the one I knew.

Not only the beak.  Those wings can do a fair bit of damage as well.  In fact, it proved to be a bit awkward eating my Christmas dinner left handed, but Sandra cut up my slices of ham for me, and even put a sprig of holly on the top.  She’s very thoughtful like that, is Sandra.  She said it was like a Swedish Christmas dinner, but I thought no wonder they’re a bit serious if that’s all they get.  Somehow, it just wasn’t the same staying awake during the Queen’s speech.  I really missed my little lie down.

Raymond Hopkins

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