FOLLY AND THE IVY

From a day with only Paul Daniels for company to a hangover from hell, four Herald staff reflect on Christmases gone wrong

Four Herald staff remember Christmases they’d rather forget

THE CAT WHO RUINED CHRISTMAS Susan Swarbrick

ALL I wanted for Christmas was a cat. Despite gentle suggestions from my mother and father that perhaps something – indeed anything – else would be easier for Santa Claus to rustle up, I was adamant that I would settle for nothing less than my own moggy.

Our beloved tabby, Bramble, had been knocked down and killed in the November. It happened the day before my sixth birthday and I was heartbroken.

I begged my parents from dawn until dusk and even sent a letter to Santa telling him not to bother with any toys: please just bring me a cat. I now know that my parents – in a bid to assist Santa in his mission – frantically asked friends, colleagues at the hospital and local farmers whether anyone knew of any kittens, but all to no avail.

Then a week before Christmas came a festive miracle. My grandpa heard a plaintive meowing from nearby wasteland. A feral cat had given birth to a litter. The mother, like poor Bramble, had been killed on the road and the kittens left to fend for themselves.

My grandpa reckoned the offspring looked about eight or nine weeks old. After the others were found homes, there was one left for me. It was serendipity. Or so it seemed.

The kitten – closer to 12 weeks old and a wild thing – did not take well to being indoors. The first person to discover this was our next-door neighbour. Each year, this kind soul would help store presents until Christmas Day.

Suffice to say the bikes and rocking horses of previous years had never tried to destroy her house. Her good curtains were ripped to shreds and the Christmas tree half demolished.

My own encounter with Jess (named after Postman Pat’s loyal feline companion) went little better. When I excitedly opened the carrier box, the cat burst out like an angry jack-in-the-box. She flew across the living room snarling and hissing and clawing at anything in her way. I promptly burst into tears.

For the remainder of the morning Jess hid beneath the bed, a pair of green eyes peering accusatorially out of the gloom. By the time we had to leave for Christmas dinner, our sulky guest hadn’t re-emerged.

Arriving home some hours later, it was pitch dark. As my dad fumbled for the light switch in the kitchen, there came a sudden ear-splitting, banshee-like howl. The cat was out from her hiding place and like a heatseeking missile had locked on to her target: my dad’s head.

Soon he too was howling as she sunk her claws into his scalp. The ensuing scene was mayhem as my dad spun round and round trying to dislodge his unwanted furry hat. The more frantic his attempts to escape became, the harder Jess clung on.

After several moments of carnage, she finally released her grip and made a bolt for the bedroom chimney, shooting up it like Santa Claus in reverse. A few minutes later – and some gentle prodding with a brush – she was back down again, trailing thick clumps of soot throughout the house.

Eventually my dad managed to curtail the trail of destruction, gently scooping Jess up with hands now safely sheathed in gardening gloves, as the rest of us, including the dog, cowered in a nearby corner.

The whirling dervish was finally released into the garden and disappeared into the night, albeit not without a final attempt to relieve my dad of both his eyes.

That could have been where the story ended but Jess stuck around and made her home under a neighbour’s shed. She went on to have kittens of her own and lived into her teens. Jess even mellowed and was happy to be tickled on her fat belly.

I got my forever cat from an Edinburgh pet shop a few days after Christmas. Apparently Santa had dropped her off there as he flew back to the North Pole.

The lacerations on my dad’s scalp took a bit longer to heal, but he saw the funny side eventually. And Jess, although universally regarded as the neighbourhood cat, ironically always liked him best.

HOME ALONE Russell Leadbetter

IT was the first Christmas Day I spent on my own. It is no accident that it was also the last. It was the mid-1980s. I was living in a slightly out-of-the-way farmhouse, sharing with a number of students and a sprinkling of cats. In summer, it was quite a nice place – not luxurious, but in those Thatcherite times, we regarded luxury with suspicion.

Winter was another story altogether: the underheated rooms, the primitive facilities, the barren countryside, the unmitigated Dickensian cheerlessness of it all. And there was one downstairs room that the cats had co-opted as a toilet when the weather turned bad. Added to all of which, I couldn’t drive. Getting anywhere was a drag.

The plan had been for all of us to spend Christmas in the farmhouse. My family were fine with the idea. But for some reason – perhaps not unrelated to the facilities – the rest decided to visit their families instead. One bloke with whom I was on friendly terms had a new girlfriend, and the chance for him to enjoy the festivities in her flat was too good to pass up.

Which left just me. I could have gone home on Christmas Eve, but some quirk of pride made me think: no, it’ll be fine. The place to myself. Watch the TV, read a book or two. A nice, quiet day. No big deal.

Of course I woke up at 9am on Christmas morning and thought: what on earth have I done? The weather was dank. The place was silent and cold. The Christmas food we had stockpiled had vanished. I remember putting a meal together – scrambled eggs, potatoes – with the aid of Katharine Whitehorn’s book, Cooking in a Bedsitter (I have it still). I fed the cats and gazed out of the window at the bare trees. I thought about getting a taxi home, but even had any taxis been running that day, the fare would have been utterly beyond my means.

After the Queen’s Speech I tried to get into the spirit of Christmas via the television: The Two Ronnies. Paul Daniels. Even Hi-de-Hi. There was a film, too – Raiders of the Lost Ark, from memory. I settled on the broken-down couch and sipped a can of Sweetheart Stout. I thought of families having fun in cosy living rooms, bellies full of turkey and roast potatoes, glasses of mulled wine in their hands, children playing with their new presents.

One of the cats jumped on my lap, having relieved himself on the carpet next door. The film ended and Des O’Connor came on. I couldn’t take any more and went to bed.

It was the bleakest Christmas Day I’d ever spent. I can’t remember if the trains began running again on Boxing Day but whenever it was, I trudged to the station and went home. “How was your Christmas?” Mum asked. “Fine, just fine,” I said.

THE CURRY CHRISTMAS Eva Arrighi

IWAS not best pleased when my family moved all the way out to bloody Bishopton from Govan, just as I was about to try to slip into clubs underage. In a teenage strop against this injustice I decided traditional

With a boak here, a row there and a stagger home, the night was complete