A Merry Christmas to all our readers and friends from Adonais and Lucy.
We’re not at home today and a friend is posting this for us from our home - slayers please note! - as we’re doing our usual Christmas Day good deeds. We like to spend this day each year in the company of people who are less fortunate and slower-moving than we are.
The Priory church in town has a very large crypt which the Vicar uses as a dining-hall, kitchen, and dormitory over Christmas Eve and until Christmas Day evening when other charities take over. I join him and, as there is no direct sunlight down there, I can stay all day long in complete safety. There are other helpers, usually, but none who sticks as close to the kitchen as eagerly as I do, or who take no breaks. I like to keep the festive fare traditionally English for this meal, and no fancy foreign muck spoils the roast geese I bring, nor the potatoes, vegetables,
It’s a really enjoyable day out as we get a few homeless coming down for a feed and a step out of the weather. There’s a great feeling of bonhomie and companionship and, if I can’t join the services in the church above (the Vicar’s bit over-generous with the cross-waving) I can surely echo his seasonal sentiments from the shady place below. And shadow part of the ritual. Besides, the homeless have a tendency to pass out by about noon anyway.
Then they can totter safely (or be carried) to the shelter at the other end of town to sleep Christmas night in warm and security. Nobody attacks my town’s tramps over Christmas; it’s as if they have a guardian angel keeping watch over them. In fact, they attain a dark and foreboding aura for a day or two which the local toughs shy away from.
Lucy spends the day in the hospital. She’s an illustrator for children’s books and so gets a free pass to the pediatric ward to read them stories and generally be all cheerful and Mary Poppins for them, poor scraps. It’s right next to Haematology, so she never has to leave the second storey for refreshments, either, though there’s usually a tipsy nurse or a porter or two to be tapped, and consultants tend to alcoholic excess at the best of times.
It’s handy for the mortuary, too, which is good because Lucy likes plans that save life in more than one way. Christmas Day is about three days after the Longest Night.
Amongst out kind, this is a big celebration, of course; the triumph of the darkness over the light and so on. Some idiot always has too much to drink and takes no precautions at all. So three days later there’s often some weeping assistant pathologist describing what’s scared him to policemen who tactfully cease to take notes after the first couple of sentences, or who begin to wonder whether to breathalyze him or check him for narcotics. Then some bright spark in the local fortean club gets to post online about another Christmas Day case of spontaneous human combustion and Lucy weeps until New Year’s Eve when we provide first aid and clean up after drunk-drivers.
So Lucy always checks up on the pathologist and his cooling charges in case there’s a happy event, and she can bring the newborn home to ours in the shade.
Otherwise we meet up again after our shifts, and then we do our annual prison visit.
The castle in town has been converted to a prison where the convicts spend the last few months and years of their all-too-short sentences. Murderers, rapists, armed robbers and gangsters all; they used to believe that they and their crimes were forgotten by all but the victims’ and their grieving relatives.
Lucy and I are able to put them right on this matter each Christmas, and it is easy as the prison can hardly be described as a home, barred by the protective aura of property and familiarity, and the skylights on the roof are poorly secured. I think those old felons really look forward to our visit every year. I’ve heard the Vicar saying that all the Christmas services are packed out in the prison chaplaincy: morning, noon and night, and no-one ever wants to return to their cells, bless them.
I truly think we’re making a difference there.
And so to those who, as Lucy and I do, make your livings by earning and buying or persuading others to give you the wherewithal of survival, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all. Whatever your species or faith, your race or station in life or your vital signs, we hope you enjoy the festive season, and that next year we can find even more ways to get along without actually killing each other.
5 comments:
As for ‘the humorless slayers that they inspire and motivate to come a-calling, see you in 2008.’
Some of us are HUMORFUL slayers or their helpers, and when we come a-calling we often do so with a merry quip, a witty aphorism, or just a plain, old-fashioned wisecrack. Funny we do much. You’ll die laughing, bloodsucker. I’ve lost too much; paid too much, to miss any chance I get to raise a laugh as I make my point.
See YOU in 2008.
American Cyclops,
You don’t seem to have learned anything much, for all your suffering. I’m sorry to seem cruel but - okay, I’m GLAD to seem cruel if you’re still intending to come after me - but you seem to lack vision. Get what I mean? You need to have a broader outlook; mentally, since it’s not physically possible any more.
You’re certainly familiar with the concept that vampires can cease to be killers, having worked with a countryman of mine - sort of - if not with his howling mad dam. And you’ve worked with her sire, and to good effect. So what have you got against me and mine?
We keep saying we’re not predators, and we keep proving it by our actions. I know we’re a tiny minority, but for God’s sake lad, isn’t Cleveland or wherever busy enough for you without having to cross the Pond and attack me?
Your ancient namesake was like you, it seems to me. He never stopped fighting and conquering, and do you know what it got him? A famous title. An empire he never governed worth a damn, and that fell apart and never looked much like what he must have intended. He died young, and he never went back to anywhere that resembled a home.
Is that your plan, lad, to conquer the world one vampire at a time, whether we deserve it or not, and never go back to anything like a home?
Take out the bad guys if you must; I know I do, but learn to distinguish between friend and foe.
And try to use your sense of humour for something better than threats; you might find that it lets a little happiness back into your heart.
If possible, good luck with a happier life.
Regards,
AB-.
Don't worry about me, Mister Good Cop / Dead Cop. If you think I've lost my fine edge, we'll see what happens when I come over there and meet your bride. I think she'll discover my delivery, if a little wooden, is still as sharp as ever.
See; now you’ve lost my sympathy.
I was sorry for you before; what with your various losses and hurts. It wasn’t my fault you daydreamed and wanked through high school, and became an academic nothing. It wasn’t me, or any of mine, who hurt you that last battle, and though vampires have been on your case for a long time, it wasn’t even one of us who put your eye out.
Unlike you, except for on one occasion, I’ve done way better than you in getting together with the women in my life; keeping them, keeping them safe, keeping them alive.
And now you threaten my girl. Okay, she can look after herself. Frankly, she can be a right bloody pain in the neck when she’s annoyed, so she doesn’t need my protection. But here’s the thing. You threatened my girl. All she ever does in her life is try to get along and prevent our two species going to war. She never, ever, kills humans except when attacked first, and has persuaded a number of others to get on the wagon too. And you threaten her.
I see from the timing of your posts you’re either up at dawn in the States, or you’re here in the UK. Probably Scotland again, I suppose.
Here in England we have a little arrangement with most of the Botchers. We don’t kill your type, and they don’t bother us. At all.
I’ve had a lousy holiday; lost my Christmas Day gig – possibly forever. So here’s how it goes. If you cross into England, then get in touch with the people here and let them tell you how we’re all getting along fine. Perhaps you’ll see there is peace amidst the battles here and there.
But if you don’t, and you cross my country’s borders accompanied by no more tweed than there is in your surname, I will put the other eye out, and you can be a Listener for the rest of your life. You threatened my girl. That’s what it takes. I wouldn’t let her dirty her claws putting you in your place.
Don’t visit.
Adonais Blackburn
That is what you get for years of patient diplomacy, Blackburn. Even as a notorious traitor to our kind, you receive only offers of death from this crippled colonial child; one who has even worked alongside your fellow traitors, and who knows that they are willing to betray us.
This is why they will finish you if we do not reach you first. Time to join your own people because the cattle will never accept you as one of their own.
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