All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Wonderful strange stories from around the world

Christmas Past

I come from a land where the wind is permanently busy. Summer holidays were often spent dying of exposure behind a sand dune while eating boiled eggs, or—on the few days of sun—lying gormless among the li-los thirty yards out to sea and slowly drifting towards France.

In deep December we went to school in the dark and we came home in the dark—and all I remember is the elements going sideways at fifty miles an hour and leaning into them to stay upright. The forecast on the radio was the same everyday for five months: “Sunny periods with sleet spreading from the east,” or “Sun glimpsed in Scotland. Police baffled…” Breakfast was hot porridge and golden syrup, and by November our dreams were only of Christmas.

We were polite kids, northern, and spirited. We were always cheeky and over-excited. Trouble was not a stranger. Every Christmas Eve, we went carol singing. We never rang the bell at a house. We’d just stand, wrapped from head to foot in scarves and balaclavas, and sing our thing. The carols always sounded muffled, as though they were being sung from underneath a blanket—which, in a sense, they were.

After three verses of “Silent Night,” our teeth would be chattering so much that we sounded like Muppets with frostbite—and then suddenly we’d all be hammering on the door for money, warmth, anything to get us out of that Arctic blast. By the time someone finally opened the door, we’d all be crying. It was pathetic.

One year, we played a soccer match in a snowstorm on the last day of term. It was like midnight at the South Pole. You couldn’t see your own feet, and we never found the goal. We never even found the ball. There was only the sound of ghostly voices, lost and searching…”Over here!” “Where?” “Here!” and “I want my mum…” The referee’s whistle blew from somewhere far away and then silence. It was eerie. Shapes would loom out of the storm and then disappear like drunken yetis. Occasionally they crashed into each other. The ground was frozen solid and there was a dull thud followed by a low moan whenever bodies landed on it. It was ludicrous. And it was real.

On Christmas Eve 1972, I was in the cellar of a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, when a bomb landed in the garden. The door crashed open and the fat Afghan hotel manager was yelling, “Goo d’ etat! You must be leaving!!” Through an organic fog of herbal fragrance, an American drawled, “We ain’t goin’ nowhere man.”

How true. On Christmas morning we emerged and stood around admiring the massive crater on the lawn. There hadn’t, in fact, been a “Goo d’ etat.” The carnage had been the work of one very unhappy and extremely drunk Afghan pilot. Having found the airport, he had then found the only jet that worked, and roared off to bomb the palace. He had missed his target by a quarter of a mile. The American said it was outstanding.

At dawn on Christmas morning 1982, I walked along the edge of the Pacific Ocean in Northeast Australia on an endless, deserted beach. The sea was all power and show that morning—vast, crystal blue, clean as a tear. I had the universe to myself and applauded the director.

That afternoon I drove inland to an invitation; Christmas lunch on an outback commune. It was 47 degrees. I drove through a small town called WHY, and then further up the road, another hamlet called WHY NOT. There was a sign outside the only garage:
“CHRISTMAS CHOOK. HALF-DEAD. $1.50.” So I bought it.

At the commune, it was given to the working dogs as a present. Later on, a hippy came up with a bit of feather dangling off his lip and told me it was delicious.

On Christmas night in 1987, I was at some outdoor rave in Freemantle, Western Australia. The whole crowd was three sheets to the wind and swayed in all directions—to the music, sheets to the wind and swayed in all directions—to the music, to the drink, and for the hell of it. Wobbling off home on my bicycle felt like riding on two rubber bands. When the motorbike crashed into me, everything was airborne—but on landing we were both too drunk to be badly hurt. The biker thought it was hilarious and kept laughing. So I sat on him. And waited for the police.

When they arrived, they arrested me for trying to squash him. I couldn’t argue with that. At the police station an hour later, the duty sergeant pressed ten bucks into my hand and said, “Take this and drink it. Walk home and Happy Christmas.”
“Why zank you osshifer… an Happy Christmas to you too.”

By Roger Beaumont

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