1 sleep to go - A fairy story for Christmas Eve…

There she sat, although it wasn’t sitting really more of an uncomfortable pine branch up the arse kind of standing. We’d had her for years. Her glitter all grimy and tarnished, her net no longer white but a dusty yellowed grey. She wasn’t a pretty thing. Her wand must have got bent in the box and the star at its end had been sellotaped back in place. She looked more like a vagrant than a magical being. A poor excuse for a Christmas fairy really.

Each year she’d come out from the cardboard box; the one brought down from the loft with much muttering and swearing from the man. He’d always talk about getting a new one, or a star, or an angel. But at the end of the day we never did and the old plastic fairy would be placed at the top of the tree for yet another Christmastime with ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and comments on how pretty she was, how much like my little sister. Personally I couldn’t see the resemblance. But as the years passed I began to see how easily one could be mistaken for the other.

Perhaps everything that’s meant to be magic has a sell-by date. Maybe magic, particularly the wished for kind, can’t last forever. The thing is with magic that it only works while it shines and, no matter how strong the spell, eventually rust will start to appear. Of course you can accept the rust as fair wear and tear and look for the shine beneath. But so many people can’t; so many people don’t even want to try.

Joy to the world.

I sometimes think about the arguments she must have seen from the top of her tree. Christmas was never a happy time at home. It would start well enough - once he’d fixed the 'blasted' Christmas tree lights - but at some point he’d lose his temper. It often happened around the opening of presents. Bits of plastic became lost, or in the excitement stood on and broken, or sometimes instructions would vanish. Losing instructions was a cardinal sin, guaranteed to trigger one of the outbursts that so often destroyed our Christmas Day.

Usually in the afternoon we’d go to Gran’s; all scrubbed up and carrying one of the toys that Father Christmas had brought us. They’d all be there – aunties and uncles and so many cousins that Gran’s parlour (seldom used at any other time) would be fit to bursting. We’d eat cake and hide under tables, play chopsticks on the piano, charades even. Women would fuss, men would play cards, and I would wait for the explosion.

It was never long in coming.

Of course it was never his fault. It never - ever - was. It was Len, or Charlie, or Bob, or Lena. A look the wrong way, a laugh taken at his (imagined) expense.

“He cheats at cards!”

“I’m not standing for that!”

“He’s a prat. He must think I’m stupid!”

And off we’d all go into the winter dark, my mum pushing the pushchair, me and the other one following whilst he strode on ten yards ahead frantic to get back to his lair to bolt the door against all the slights and injustices the world had always thrown at him.

It was never his fault. It never - ever - was.

The fairy looked on as his next round of arguments began. Sometimes I wished she’d wave her wand and make him go away or at the very least transport us back to Gran’s so that we could join in the Christmas fun with the rest of them. Instead we were sent to bed early to cry and listen to the shouting below, learning to live with the glimmer under the rust, rather than enjoy the glitter of tinsel.

I kept on hoping that it would be different next year of course. But it’s often better to keep you feet and eyes fixed firmly on the ground and only let your dreams fly to the top of the tree as a last resort. Disappointment in your parents - it’s a bitter lesson to learn, and once learnt there’s no unlearning. Sometimes I felt like taking an axe to that tree. Well, you have to take the crunchy with the smooth I suppose. But without a tree there’s nowhere to put a fairy, and without tarnish there’s nothing to polish, no shine.

It wasn’t the fairy’s fault. Like the rest of us she was powerless to change anything. Her wand was bent and her faded star kept on with sellotape. Her magic had long gone. When Christmas was over she went back to the peace, quiet, and dust of her box to sleep for another year.

And we just continued.