Boxing day one year on - Pottersville...

I’m still in Bedford Falls I think, or it could be Pottersville. Another Boxing Day has arrived and, as always, it’s a day of anti-climax. One of those ‘should do’ days that’s really a ‘can’t be arsed to do’ day. I could go for a brisk walk, I could fix the gatepost, I could tidy the house. I could, I could, I should… but I can’t be arsed.

I feel a little like George Bailey wandering around Pottersville. Boxing Day never seems quite right to me. It confuses me. It’s the start of the ‘between time’, the time between Christmas and the start of the New Year; although I’m never really sure when the New Year starts - probably not until you’ve stopped saying ‘Happy New Year’ halfway through January.

Perhaps I should get out my radio controlled helicopter to while away the time like I did last year. Gaynor bought it for me the Christmas before, but I never got around to playing with it. Gaynor, being Gaynor, rewrapped it and gave me the present all over again; and this time I decided to give it a go. It flew very well, but not for long because the batteries wound down really quickly. We were about to recharge the helicopter when trouble entered the room.

I don’t know why I invited Potter for Christmas, but what a mistake it was. I hadn’t forgotten his control freak nature, but I wasn't reckoning on it either - not at Christmastime. Wrong! When he saw that the helicopter wouldn’t fly any longer, he decided that we’d not read the instructions. THAT was why it wouldn’t fly. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that?

For the record, we had read the instructions. Holly had read them aloud, twice, before we even began to fly the thing and we knew the helicopter only had 10 minutes of battery power.

Of course Potter’s an instruction freak and believes that reading them over and over will make everything right. Even so, he’s generally wrong - so very wrong and in far too many ways to recount in this humble blog post. Anyway, we all knew that reading the instructions again would not miraculously make the helicopter fly again and we said so. ‘BOOM!’ Potter was off (as he always does on these occasions, particularly mine) and another Christmas went down the tubes.

It was my own fault, I should have known better. Inviting Potter into my house is always like allowing a horrible disease into an otherwise healthy body. He’s always been the same; sitting around, spinning his little webs, thinking the whole world revolves around him and his ill-gotten money. Well, it doesn’t, he’s just Potter and in the whole vast configuration of things, I’d say he is nothing but a scurvy little spider! 

At least he didn’t get the chance again this year and he won’t be getting the chance to ruin anything around us ever again. I haven’t played with my helicopter since. I should but I don’t feel like it. That’s one of Potter’s best tricks: taking away the shine until you can’t be bothered to try again. It's all part of his controlling nature.

Anyway, not wishing to put bad words into the mouth of good old George Bailey - “Fuck him and the donkey he rode into town on.”

Bedford Falls or Pottersville… Hee-Haw!