It’s a funny old world: Dillie Keane
Idon’t know about you, but I try to creep through the festive season without disturbing the Christmas imp. If I make it through to Boxing Day without disaster, I’m deeply grateful to whichever angel is looking after me.
I have a long history of courting Yuletide catastrophe. One year, I woke up with acute strep throat and couldn’t move my head at all. Instead of going to my sister’s, where the red carpet was being rolled out, I went to my empty flat and gibbered for days. And when I say empty, I mean empty. I ate tinned tomatoes for a week.
The tradition of calamity started the year Dad decided we’d kick off the festivities with Champagne cocktails. Mum had three in a row. Forget Jägerbombs – these babies are lethal! The sugar lump at the bottom of the glass ensures that the alcohol whizzes directly into the bloodstream. It’s probably quicker to inject the brandy straight into your arm, but a Champagne cocktail is much ritzier!
It started well enough. Mum became giddy and insisted Dad dance with her to a song called
On The 5.45,
which they had danced to frequently during the War. We only had it on a long cherished shellac, though, so the old wind-up gramophone had to be fetched from the cellar.
By the time this was accomplished, the bread sauce was burnt, the gravy had separated and Mum’s mood had darkened. Once we got to the pudding, she’d become pugnacious and told my sister she was overweight and would never find a husband.
Exit sister, sobbing, to her room.
After dinner, she made me play the same tune on the piano 15 times in a row and cried copiously about her lost youth, and then she decided to do the washing-up and knocked her engagement ring down the plughole. So Dad – not one of nature’s gifted plumbers – had to unscrew the U-bend. I shall spare you a more detailed description.
The ring safely retrieved and the mess duly mopped, Mum fell asleep, and we settled down to the annual marathon game of canasta.
If only that particular seasonal tale ended there! But the Christmas imp had one more trick up his sleeve… Dad decided to be helpful and take the gramophone back down to the cellar. We don’t know how it happened but, the next thing we knew, Mum woke up to the sound of the gramophone crashing down the cellar steps. When she went to investigate, On The 5.45 was in three pieces on the cellar floor.
We never touched Champagne cocktails again. Is it any wonder
I keep a very low profile throughout the festive season?