by Im Griffin
We had Christmas dinner after the Top of the Pops Special. Nancy and I were given small glasses of sherry but Ella and Tom were too little and were only allowed a sip. I didn’t like the sherry much – it was rather bitter, but after dinner when we were clearing up Nancy and I sneaked another glass each with a spoonful of sugar stirred in, and it was much improved. She was quite nice for once and lent me the Christmas special of Just Seventeen, which was all about ‘Who will you be kissing under the mistletoe?’ The options were ‘the sad old ex’, ‘the party smarty’, ‘the one in the Christmas tree jumper’ and ‘Mr Right’. I tried to imagine myself under a sprig of mistletoe with one of the boys from primary school but it was wholly implausible, and I didn’t know any other boys.
On the day after Boxing Day we set off to Yorkshire, stopping en route to drop Nancy and her gigantic suitcase of clothes at her friend Miz’s, and to collect Miranda. Our house in Yorkshire was just over the Pennines, close to the border with Derbyshire. It stood in open countryside and was therefore infinitely preferable to our dreary Manchester suburb, with its rows of identikit houses and endless supermarket car parks. In the past we had gone to Yorkshire for Christmas Day itself, but there had been a fiasco the previous year when my parents transported all of our Christmas presents and decorations over in advance, including the Christmas tree and the turkey, only to be foiled on Christmas Eve by snow so thick that the road was blocked and we had to stay in Manchester. I actually preferred having frozen pizza to turkey, but that wasn’t the point.
It rained cold sleety stuff as we drove over the Pennines and by the time we arrived the sky was so overcast that it felt like night, although it was only three o’clock in the afternoon. Mum and dad said they were going to drive round to see some friends of theirs and Ella, Tom, Miranda and I settled down for a marathon game of Monopoly.
There was some initial squabbling over who was going to be what: Miranda wanted the hat because it was her lucky mascot but Tom insisted thathe was always the hat, even though I knew this to be blatantly untrue. He’d always been the dog until the last game we played when Nancy told him that the dog was a poodle and therefore a girlie dog, and he was just taking advantage of Nancy’s absence to try and bag the hat.
Miranda gave in with grace and settled for the iron, and we finally got going. I employed my usual tactic of trying to get the stations and the utilities and any property at the upper end of the market, while Ella just bought everything she landed on, a strategy which sometimes produced spectacular results and sometimes ended in early bankruptcy. For some reason Tom was very attached to the blue properties – I think he just liked the name ‘Angel Islington’ - and he wasn’t really that interested in buying anything else. His chance landing on Pentoville Road on his first go round looked suspiciously fixed and he went on to have a huge screaming fit when Miranda landed on Angel Islington, but she humoured him and agreed not to buy it because he was only little.
As always, the game ended in tears. Miranda and I had between us successfully built up an empire on the bottom side of the board. I had Mayfair and Park Lane with hotels on and she had all the green properties with hotels too; Ella had reluctantly sold her Bond Street to avoid a financial crisis. In three successive goes Tom landed on Regent Street, then Park Lane and then Mayfair, and although I graciously agreed to waive the fine in exchange for all three of his blue properties, he wasn’t having any of it. He said it was ‘ a crap game anyway’ and gave the board an almighty kick, sending the houses and hotels sliding all over the place. Things then turned very nasty when a large stash of money was revealed under Ella’s corner of the board.
“Ella, where did you get all that money from? I thought you said you were broke! Have you been stealing from the bank?”
Ella turned pink and said it was her own money that she had been saving. However this seemed pretty unlikely given that only a few minutes ago she had been forced to sell Bond Street due to extreme poverty, and that Miranda and I had since been out of the room to make a cup of coffee. Tom would have been too engrossed with rearranging his houses on Angel Islington to notice the bank robbery happening under his nose.
Seeing as Miranda and I had won by miles in any case we didn’t see much point in pursuing the alleged theft, but Tom was incensed by the unfairness of it all.
“Cheat! Cheat! You’re last because you cheated!”
Ella continued to protest her innocence. “There’s no rule that you can’t keep your own money where you want.”
“Yes but it wasn’t your money! Janet said you stole it from the bank!”
Then Ella whacked Tom and Tom started crying and kicked the Monopoly board round a bit more and mum and dad came home to find Miranda and me watching television, Ella reading a book on their bed and Tom sulking in our bedroom, with bits of the Monopoly game scattered throughout the house. I didn’t see why I should clear it up – it wasn’t me who threw the money over the banisters.
The evening was salvaged by a trip to the chip shop. Mum and dad had cold turkey with their chips but we refused point blank to eat any more turkey so Ella and Tom and I had sausages and Miranda had a cup of mushy peas. They’re the kind of disgusting food that she always goes for given half the chance, although personally I thought they looked like green vomit. Afterwards there was Christmas cake and Ella let Tom have the corner piece for maximum icing even though it was strictly her turn.
We went to bed quite early, and I’d already negotiated that Miranda and I should go in the bunk beds so that we could talk without disturbing the others. I let her have the top bunk because she was the guest, even though I always feel claustrophobic on the bottom. After some muttering about the Monopoly we started talking about our childhoods, and I recounted one of my favourite childhood fantasies: being locked in a sweetshop.
“Hey Mim, suppose you were locked in a sweetshop and could eat anything you liked, what would you have first?”
She yawned and gave the question some serious thought. “Well, you’d obviously have to be careful. I mean, if you started off with a couple of mars bars you wouldn’t have room for much else.”
“Oh of course, you’d have to just have one bite out of the chocolate bars.”
“Well, if that’s allowed, I’d probably start off by tasting all the things I’d never normally buy. Things like Walnut Whips and Dime bars and Picnics.”
“I had a Walnut Whip once, it was really nice actually. But yeah, you’re right, I wouldn’t buy one because they’re too small. Anyway, I think I’d eat the boxes of chocolates – you know, the Milk Tray and stuff.”
“That’d be great because you could just eat the best ones out of each box.”
“And I’d make ice cream sodas to drink.”
“Oh, I forgot about the ice cream! I’d definitely have a Cornetto, we’re never allowed to get them...”
Miranda was quiet for a moment. Then she piped up again. “You know what I always used to want to do?”
“No, what?”
“You know at the end of We are the Champions, that bit where they’re in the swimming pool and it’s full of rafts and inflatables and things, and he blows his whistle and shouts ‘away you go?’ I always wanted to be one of the kids jumping in and screaming.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “You wally!”
Still, I didn’t want Miranda thinking I was being superior when I had no reason to be, so I owned up. “Yeah, me too actually.”
Miranda reached her hand down and I gave it a squeeze and then went to sleep. I think she’d started on fantasy number three, which was going round Alton Towers when it was completely deserted.
When I awoke the next day I knew immediately that something exciting had happened. The light seeping in between the curtains had that strange intense quality that can only mean one thing, and a quick glance through the window confirmed my suspicions: the world was drowned in snow. I tiptoed back to the bunk beds and tugged at Miranda’s pigtail which was dangling down from the top bunk.
“Miranda, snow! Tons of it.”
Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth to say something, but I quickly shushed her. “Don’t make a noise! We don’t want to wake Ella and Tom.”
She still made a bit of a racket climbing down the ladder – Miranda’s not the kind of person who’s good at being quiet – but Ella and Tom remained oblivious to everything. We tiptoed out of the door and down the stairs, pausing to collect our coats and put them on over our pyjamas.
“We haven’t got any socks for our wellies,” Miranda hissed.
“Never mind that! Don’t you want to be first in the snow?”
I unlocked the door and we charged out and into the garden. We ran up and down and kicked shimmering trails of white diamonds through the air. It was the kind of snow they have in films, so dry and powdery that you can hardly believe it’s just frozen water, and it was so deep it came almost to the top of our boots.
“Are we allowed in that field across the road?” Miranda asked.
“I don’t see why not.” It had a public footpath running up one side, after all. We legged it across the road and into the field, where we marked out our territory in ever decreasing circles, until we stood red and panting in the very middle.
“Let’s make a snowman,” said Miranda. “Then we’ll be able to wave to him from your house.”
I began rolling the ball for the body and Miranda made the head. When she’d finished she joined me behind the body ball, which had grown so huge that I couldn’t push it on my own. Bent double, we heaved it forward until it refused to go any further.
“Looks like this is where Mr Snowman is going to stay.”
Miranda counted us in and we lifted the head ball up between us. The first time we only got it to chest height before it crashed back down to the ground.
“Come on Miranda!” I yelled. “Give it some welly!”
Miranda stuck her chin out in her familiar gesture of determination and waggled her fingers in an attempt to get some feeling back into them.
“One – two – three!”
In a superhuman effort we inched the ball up to the snowman’s shoulders and into position. I held it in place while Miranda patted in a neck to stop the head rolling off.
“Hang on a sec Mim!” I ran back across the road and procured a carrot for the nose and two of Tom’s marbles for eyes. Consumption of a tangerine was necessary to get the peel for his mouth but that was no hardship. I was just rummaging in the drawer where we kept old scarves and odd gloves when my mum came down the stairs in her dressing gown.
“Janet Pritchard! Don’t tell me you’ve been out in the snow in your pyjamas!”
“Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes at her. “Can I borrow this awful old hat of yours?” It was a round brown thing rather like a cow pat in appearance, that my mum had worn for years. Last Christmas she had been given a much nicer pink fluffy hat with ear-pieces which she wore most of the time, but I knew she secretly preferred the brown one. Still, she understood the urgency of my need.
“You can have it as long as you bring it back. And take Tom’s red scarf – he refuses to wear it since I washed it.”
“Cheers Mum!”
“But once you’ve done that come back in to get dressed. You must be freezing, and goodness knows what Miranda’s mother would think of me.”
I approached Miranda waving the hat triumphantly, with the rest of the spoils stuffed in my pockets.
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Miranda enthused. “Ooh, what a hideous hat.”
We fixed all the bits in place and stood back to admire him. He was probably the biggest snowman I had ever made.
“I’m getting a bit cold,” Miranda said sheepishly. It seemed a shame to relinquish the snow but I knew what she meant – my feet felt as if frost-bite had already set in. When we got back inside my mum had to undo our coats because our fingers were so stiff, and then we ran a huge steaming bath and got in together, and mum brought us cups of tea.
Later on in the day when we’d recovered we all went out for a walk. The sky was the colour of the roof slates on the houses and it looked as if it might snow again later on. We didn’t see any other people or hear any cars, and even the sound of our voices seemed muffled by the snow. At one point I hung behind the others to readjust my layers of socks, and when I looked up they had rounded a corner in the track and were nowhere to be seen. I wasn’t afraid exactly; I often went out on my own and any in case they were only a few yards away. But there was something slightly spooky about being surrounded by so much grey and white, and it was with relief that I turned the corner to see the row of colourful figures ahead.
We went along by the side of the river, where icicles hung in sheets down the banks and from the rocks.
“It’s like a fairy grotto,” Miranda said, her eyes big and shiny.
My mum reached up and snapped off a couple of icicles. “I used to like sucking icicles when I was a little girl.”
We took one each and held them in our gloved hands. It was like an ice lolly except that the pleasure was in the texture rather than the taste: the icicle felt like a piece of glass against your tongue, and you could suck it into a point so sharp it might cut you.
Soon we were competing to see who could find the biggest icicles for sucking. Miranda tended to discard hers after a few sucks in search of an even better one, but I kept going with mine until the final piece of ice had dissolved completely in my mouth. Ella and Tom joined in too and we only gave up when the ice began to soak through our gloves.
When we got back to the house we turned the gas fire up high and had coffee and mince pies. I wolfed down my first mince pie but somehow I didn’t fancy another one. Assuming it was because I’d eaten the first one too quickly, I decided that I would drink my coffee quietly until I was better. I managed a few sips and then my stomach started to feel funny. It wasn’t so bad when I sat on the floor with my knees pressed up against me, but something still wasn’t right.
My mum looked across at me. “Are you ok?”
I shook my head miserably. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
I trudged upstairs to the bathroom and sat on the floor next to the toilet. The lid was up and I would have liked to press my forehead against the cool ceramic bowl, but I knew what a bad aim Tom was so I didn’t.
My stomach heaved and a brown jet of vomit shot into the toilet. It tasted of mince pies. A few more heaves and it was all over. I flushed the toilet and wiped up the brown specks around the top, and then I washed my face and cleaned my teeth very thoroughly. There was still a faint mince pie flavour.
Mum came up the stairs to find me curled up on the bathroom floor.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Do you at least feel a bit better for being sick?” She always looked on the bright side of things. She helped me put on my pyjamas and get into bed and then she went downstairs and brought my library book up for me. Miranda came up too.
“Do you feel awful? It must have been the icicles.”
I shuddered at the memory of their cold metallic taste. Perhaps I’d eaten some soil along with the icicles, or perhaps a dog had peed on them. “I’ll never touch icicles again.”
“That’s what you said last time,” mum said. “After the wild garlic. Do you remember?”
I wriggled irritably. “No, what?”
“When you were about four or five you took a fancy to wild garlic leaves. I suppose the taste was quite vinegary and that’s why you liked them. You ate handfuls.”
“Didn’t you stop me?”
“I don’t think we realised how many you’d eaten until you were sick everywhere.” She sighed dreamily. “You were wearing a beautiful lilac cardigan that Aunty Mavis had knitted as well. It was never the same afterwards. I should have hand washed it.”
Miranda giggled and then tried to pretend she wasn’t when she saw me glaring at her. I was cross with both of them: with Miranda for thinking it was funny, and with my Mum for encouraging me to eat st
upid things in the first place. I picked up my book in a very pointed kind of way.
“Let’s leave Janet for now,” mum suggested. “Perhaps you could help me with the tea Miranda?” And they scurried off downstairs together to chop carrots and giggle about what an idiot I was.
I wasn’t sick again and by the morning I was back to normal. However, as always happens when you’ve been sick, from then onwards I associated the last thing I’d eaten, mince pies in this instance, with vomiting. In fact it still only takes a whiff of candied fruit to make me feel nauseous. I can’t eat icicles anymore either, but that’s not such a problem at Christmas parties and things.
On the day before we were due to go back to Manchester my dad said he’d take us sledging. We had two blue plastic sledges, each big enough to take two people. There were loads of good hills for sledging around our house, but it was best to go up on the moors, where the slopes were steep and the bumpiness of the ground beneath the snow added extrafrisson.
The desolation of the moors never failed to take my breath away. They stretched as far as the eye could see with no trees or buildings to break up the monotony; nothing save for the occasional low stone shelter for grouse-shooting. Today the amphibian mottling of green and brown with its random patches of deep purple was completely obscured beneath a thick layer of snow, giving the landscape a slightly surreal appearance. It was as if the world had just been made: everything was new and untouched.
Ella and Tom took one sledge and Miranda and I were in the other. Miranda sat in the front and I went behind her with my legs stretching down the sides. My dad grasped the back of the sledge and ran for a few metres with us before launching us off into white space.
“Yahoo!” screamed Miranda; she was an avid reader of The Beano and she often came out with silly expressions. We sped down the hill, picking up speed and steering by leaning to one side or the other. The ground levelled off at the bottom but the momentum kept us going for ages and when we turned round to look the others were multi-coloured specks in the distance. I grabbed the sledge rope and we ran back up again, staggering as our wellies sank into the soft snow.