The pale, quiet boy stands back while the boy in the red suit turns redder than his suit as he pulls and pulls at his end of the cracker. The girl throws her whole body weight on top of the cracker to stop her new enemy, the fat boy, winning the bang. The pale, quiet boy standing in the middle, holding his ticket, wonders why he can see a paw beginning to poke through the rip.
BANG! There it goes like somebody split the atom and up in the air is a mushroom cloud made of chocolate and yo-yos and false noses and finger-puppets, and for a second it hangs in perfect space, then, as the contents of the cracker scatter over the ballroom, it’s every child for itself, fighting over silver coins and plastic spiders, and nobody notices that free falling back through the smoky, acrid air is a small terrier with a paper hat round its neck.
‘Where’s the big present?’ demands the fat boy. ‘I won the cracker. I want the big present.’
The dog lands at his feet.
‘What’s that dog doing in the cracker?’ shouts the slim girl.
The dog is used to being chased and shouted at, but this time he knows he’s in trouble, so he thinks on his feet, all four, as fast as his doggy brain can, and he says, ‘ Hi! I’m a magic dog, like the genie in the bottle.’
‘What genie? What bottle?’ says the fat boy, suspicious that he’s missing something. ‘Who stole my genie?’
‘If you’re a MAGIC DOG, yeah, right, where are my three wishes?’ says the slim girl.
The pale, quiet boy says nothing. He’s looking at the dog.
‘OK! One wish each,’ says the dog, pointing at the children with his snouty nose. ‘One. Two. Three! Your wish is my command!’
‘I want a Ferrari,’ shouts the fat boy.
‘Righto,’ says the dog. ‘Give me ten minutes.’
The dog dives under a long table-cloth and races to the end of the ballroom. He is thinking only of escape. He skids across the polished floor, over the carpet, past the cloakroom, sees the zigzag sign for the emergency stairs and reckons that must be for him.
This is an emergency! Go, dog, go!
He helter-skelters down the narrow concrete stairs and lands on his head in the underground car park.
‘Move that Ferrari in Bay 16, will you?’ shouts the valet, winging the keys through the air towards his assistant.
And it must be said that for all our planning and plotting, and deliberating and deciding, the moment that changes everything comes when it will, and cannot be coaxed, or invoked, and should not be missed.
The dog didn’t miss. He stood on his hind-paws and leapt. He leapt out of his scraggy, raggy, tooth-and-nail past and caught the future as it whipped by his jaws.
There he is, back up the whirl of the concrete stairs, through the emergency exit, past the cloakroom, into the ballroom, just escaping concussion from a hundred yo-yos, but with one bound he’s on the stage by the remains of the exploded cracker, and there are the car keys at the feet of the fat boy in the Elvis suit.
‘Underground parking, Bay 16,’ says the dog.
The fat boy’s eyes gleam with greedy happiness. He doesn’t bother to thank the dog, just grabs the keys in his fat fist and waddles off, shoving the smaller children out of his way.
‘Me now,’ orders the thin girl. ‘Me, me me! I want a real fur coat.’
‘That’s unethical,’ replies the dog, who has never heard the word before, but finds it on the tip of his pink tongue.
‘I want one!’ shrieks the girl with such force that all the glass baubles on the Christmas tree shatter to powder.
‘OK!’ says the dog. ‘Your wish is my command.’ He’s about to turn tail, but the pale little boy has knelt down and given him a drink of water and a ham sandwich, from which he has carefully removed the lettuce.
The dog is grateful, and hopes that, whatever happens, he can bring the little boy his wish. But first there is the matter of the fur coat.
He’s lucky, because the parents are arriving to collect their children, just at the moment when gentle tinsel snow begins to fall in the bar next to the ballroom, and wouldn’t a drink be nice, and what’s five minutes in a lifetime, especially at Christmas? But these are the minutes some good angel has earmarked for the dog, who can’t believe his soft brown eyes as coat after coat is passed over to the girls working in the padded cloakroom, and if he just sits quietly, and just waits – yes, it’s a mink!
The girls are busy hanging up the coats in the pile and chatting about best-value turkeys, so they never notice the mink silently sliding away under the counter and across the floor, dog underneath it, twenty times his size, but he’s a terrier and born with the Holy Law of the Jaw – Don’t Let Go.
‘Darling, there’s a coat running across the floor on its own,’ says one very drunk man to his very sober wife.
She doesn’t even look round. ‘Don’t be silly, darling.’
And so the sleek mink coat, piloted by the rough-coated dog, makes its way across the carpet, into the ballroom and towards the bottom of the steps of the stage.
There’s a muffled, ‘Woof!’ The girl is on her mobile phone and doesn’t notice that her heart’s desire has arrived. The pale little boy has been waiting, really a bit anxious about the magic dog, and when he sees the coat like a rug on centipede legs slinking across the floor he knows the dog must be underneath, and runs to pull him out.
‘Are you all right?’ asks the boy.
‘Bit hot,’ says the dog. ‘Tell her the coat’s here.’
The girl covers her face in her hands, then starts clapping, the way she’s seen winners do on TV talent shows. She pulls on the coat, and sashays off the stage and falls flat on her face, just as the master of ceremonies reappears with a microphone in his hand. He looks grim. He looks serious.
It seems that the winning ticket 999 has not been multiplied by three after all. It wasn’t the Christmas elves; it was two felt-tip pens. The holders of ticket numbers 9 and 99 each added the required 9s to their stock. The big present will go to the real number 999 only.
The pale little boy still has his ticket in his hand. The master of ceremonies examines it through a magnifying glass – yes, it’s the one.
The organ strikes up ‘Jingle Bells’, but not loud enough to drown out the terrific crash in the hotel lobby.
Everyone runs to the doors to see a red Ferrari, driven by a red-faced boy in a red suit, stalled in a shatter of plate-glass, with the white Christmas tree jammed through the sunroof and the green doorman sprawled over the bonnet.
‘The dog made me do it!’ screams the boy as the security guards drag him out.
The girl in the fur coat is laughing so much she can hardly hold her phone still enough to take the snap to send to all her friends. As she holds both hands above her head a pair of handcuffs slots securely round her wrists.
‘That girl has stolen my coat. She’s wearing it!’ The Russian model is unhappy. ‘I am a friend of President Putin.’
‘The dog gave it to me,’ wails the girl. ‘Arrest the dog!’
But the dog is nowhere to be seen. The dog has crept behind the blow-up reindeer in the ballroom and he’s not coming out.
As the row in the hotel lobby reaches custard-pie proportions, the master of ceremonies takes the pale, quiet boy to a gold box with a red ribbon and tells him to open it. Hesitatingly the boy pulls the ribbon, because he isn’t used to big presents. He and his mother don’t have much money. Inside the box is a mountain bike.
‘And it’s all yours,’ says the master of ceremonies. ‘You won it fair and square.’
Left alone with the bike, the boy runs his hands over the clean cogs and smooth gears, the lightweight frame and the drop/raise handlebars. It’s the best bike in the world.
‘Well, you won’t be needing a wish, then,’ says the dog invisibly, from behind the blow-up reindeers. ‘Probably for the best, under the
circumstances.’
Another shriek comes from the hotel lobby as the Ferrari owner is reunited with the remains of his car. He’s shouting something about a golf course and Donald Trump.
The boy sits on the edge of the stage, swinging his thin legs and looking at the dog’s eyes looking at him. He holds out another sandwich. The dog’s brown eyes dart left, then right, then he trots out, takes the sandwich and sits next to the boy.
‘I’m not a magic dog,’ says the dog. ‘I’m a stray. I got trapped in that cracker. It was so cold last night, and I usually sleep under the wheelie bins in the park, but they had taken them away, and I was shivering, so I went for a walk to get warm and I saw a light in a window and I found a bench full of coloured paper, and fell asleep, and, well, here I am.’
‘I came on the bus,’ said the boy. ‘I live with my mum. She cleans at the hotel so they have to invite me to the party.’
‘What were you going to wish for?’ said the dog. ‘If I had been a magic dog?’
The boy thought for a bit because he was that kind of boy, then he said, ‘If I had a wish, my wish would be to take you home with me and keep you forever.’
‘What?’ barked the dog, his ears going round and round like satellite dishes picking up an alien signal. ‘What? Woof! What? Woof! What? WO-OO-OOF!’
‘I’d wish for you,’ said the boy. ‘My name’s Tommy. What’s yours?’
‘Haven’t got one.’
‘Then I’ll call you Magic,’ said Tommy.
And Tommy asked his mother if he could take Magic home, and she said yes, he could keep the dog, as long as he knew that a dog is forever and not just for Christmas.
That was all right, because Tommy was a forever sort of boy.
Then Tommy and Magic ran round and round and helped Tommy’s mum to collect the streamers and burst balloons and all the things that Christmas leaves behind. And they were happy because they weren’t leaving behind each other.
At last Tommy’s mother finished work, and off they went, all three into the frosty streets to the bus stop.
The dog trotted beside the boy, and looked into the clear sky at the star-dogs, cold and fine, and he knew that, whatever you wish, you can’t wish for better than love.
ver Christmas-time nobody escapes without eating dried figs, satsumas, pomegranates, cinnamon, cloves, marzipan, gingerbread, all kinds of fruits and spices, often made into stollen, lebkuchen, mulled wines, hot punches, stirred puddings, and candy sticks whirled out of sugar and orange oil and hung on the Christmas tree.
If there is a stocking for Santa to fill on Christmas Eve, tradition has it that an orange is put into the toe. An orange studded with cloves in the bottom of the pan is the basis for all mulled wines.
In cold countries fresh fruit in winter used to be scarce. The orange, with its bright colour, sweet taste and injection of vitamin C was a welcome Christmas treat.
Christmas is a midwinter festival.
For most of humans’ time on earth the dead of winter has been the hardest time for food, especially fresh food. The dead of winter is also the most difficult time psychologically. The days are short. The weather is harsh.
Imagine no electricity, poor roads, little travel, the daily toil to keep the fire and cooking stove going. Damp clothes, damp beds and numbing cold. None of that changes until the 20th century.
Imagine the joy of twelve days of feasting, warmth, relaxation, cheer, contemplation, singing, charity, kindness and some kind of point to life. Religious faith can protect the mind from depression and despair, not least because of the story it tells; of hope and new beginnings. And because communities are essential for mental health. The loneliness that so many people experience now at Christmas is a consequence of our loss of community – including the community provided by belonging to a church and a faith.
At a time when religious extremism hasn’t been so deadly since the Crusades or the Inquisition, it is difficult to think about faith as hope, or belief as kindness to others. But Christmas, in the Christian tradition, begins with gifts – the gift of new life in the baby Jesus, the gifts of the kings to the Christ Child and the gift of God to us. There is no need to believe this to see its basis and purpose. Christmas-time is about giving.
As a festival, then, when food and warmth was harder to come by, sharing with your neighbours – loving your neighbour as yourself – could be life-saving.
And it would cheer you up.
When I was growing up we had a cherry tree on our allotment. Every year my dad covered the ripening fruits with old nylon net curtains to stop the birds stripping them. Later the fruit was bottled for Christmas.
Some of our bottled cherries were bartered for other things we wanted to eat at Christmas. Everyone we knew worked on the same system – stored apples for apple sauce swapped for sticks of Brussels sprouts, chestnuts traded for walnuts, gingerbread men exchanged for mince pies.
The story goes that in England, Elizabeth I had gingerbread men given out in her own likeness. I suppose they were gingerbread queens, and you’d think the gay community would have revived them by now.
My German friend tells me that the gingerbread houses so popular in Germany, and in the USA, started as a craze in the 19th century, after the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. The witch’s house in that story is made of gingerbread – and we know that Christmas traditions are a bizarre mix-up of influences. That is part of their charm.
Talking about gingerbread with Nigella, she drew my attention to her gingerbread stuffing (find it in Nigella Christmas). This is perfect Christmassy, spicy, fruity fare, with the zest of satsumas included. And, as she says, if you don’t stuff the bird with it, you can eat slices of it cold as a kind of savoury cake.
Dried fruit and spices came to the colder northern countries from the Middle East via Spain, with its Moorish connections, and later from India. One of the many drawbacks of the British Empire was Britain’s obsession with foreign food – cooked the British way. Think coronation chicken.
Throwing in dried fruit or ginger felt racy and modern at the same time as being imperialist and colonial – so it was a perfect combination for a dwindling power more comfortable with Mrs Beeton than the Beatles.
Mrs Winterson made her own Boxing Day turkey curry, which I cannot reproduce here, but which was a version of coronation chicken, fried up with curry powder, crystallised ginger and sultanas.
It is no wonder that in England in the 1970s there used to be a political party called No More Fruit in Main Courses.
This was at a time when anyone could stand for parliament – the financial outlay being low, and eccentricity still being a British virtue.
Too many of us were being forced to eat prunes and mashed potato, duck à l’orange made with tinned mandarin segments, or tinned tuna and sliced apricot halves. Curry sauces made using lime or mango jelly mixtures were common.
At Christmas things only got worse as some vague idea of Bethlehem being in the East took hold of the nation’s kitchens.
Two other recipes in this book – one Pakistani and one Jewish – handle fruit and spice with the deftness you’d expect, but for now I’ll leave you with a mulled wine – it’s got fruit, it’s got spice, and you don’t have to eat it.
Imagine yourself a hundred years ago arriving at an inn in the snow and the cold and wanting something warming with a boozy, snoozy effect. There you are, standing by the log fire, your chilled hands round a cup of warm wine that is aromatic and pleasing.
To me, drinking mulled wine in a party dress in an overheated room is a bit odd.
Mulled wine is great to decant into a flask and take on a winter walk with a slice of Christmas cake and a hunk of cheese in your pocket.
Author’s note: mulled wine is more of a spell than a recipe. A steaming pan of dark liquid looks and smells like a witchy brew.
Use your nose. Taste as you go along. Experiment.
YOU NEED
Bottle or two of decent red wine
A couple of glasses of ruby port
Fresh orange studded with fresh cloves. I know this takes ages to do, but small children and old people like doing it. Good moment to listen to another chapter of that audiobook . . .
Small piece of peeled root ginger
Cinnamon stick
Fresh bay leaf
Raw cane sugar
About the wine: don’t believe anyone who tells you that any old red will do. A headache is a headache. Buy a good, straightforward claret. A wine merchant’s everyday claret will serve you better here than a dash to the supermarket wine lake. If you wouldn’t drink the wine from the bottle, why would you drink it from the pan?
About the port: nothing fancy, but my maxim is: one liver, one life. Some people throw in a dash of brandy, and if I don’t have any port I just use claret.
METHOD
Put the studded orange in a heavy-bottomed pan and pour in the wine and port. Add the other ingredients, except for the sugar, and heat slowly and gently. Once the mixture is warm, add sugar to taste. The level of sweetness is entirely up to you.
Don’t let the mixture boil or you will boil off the alcohol.
You can gently reheat the wine later.
I like mulled wine at eleven o’clock in the morning, when I’ve finished my winter jobs outside, or at four or five o’clock in the afternoon, when the day is done and it’s not time for drinks or dinner. Enjoy it with gingerbread and cheese.
A GHOST STORY
n the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland is the famous ski resort of Mürren.
Mürren cannot be reached by road. You must arrive by train at Lauterbrunnen and from there take the cable car to the village.
Three peaks stare you down: the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau.
The British started going to Mürren in 1912.
That was the year Captain Scott died at the North Pole. There was much talk of him that year, talk of his heroism and his sacrifice, talk of how the British must bear their burden of Empire, half the world coloured pink like a tin of salmon.