Happy 'December 20th' Saturday to you all!
This week has been a busy one. My
preparations for Christmas continue and are almost completed.
I've bought and wrapped my gifts.
I've organised my bits of the Christmas Day menu and the food for the days around it. The shopping is done apart from the fresh goodies - etc. veggies and meats. I've done some of my
second edits to 'the Taexali Game' though what remains won't take me long.
What I've also spent time on recently is writing
two short stories.
One story has been for the
'Christmas with the Crooked Cats' Facebook group extravaganza of
FREE stories. (See my blog post
HERE for that story)
The second story I started for my every-second-Saturday post at the
Writing Wranglers and Warriors Blog but at over 5 thousand words it's a little too long. Though I've posted the beginning of it on the Wranglers blog,
I'm sharing the whole story here today.
Anticipation of new stories is a theme of this short story. For me, it's a delve into my past but as an author of fiction there may be some parts I haven't quite remembered correctly.
Maybe some of my old school friends will tell me what's real and what's fiction about it?
Enjoy!
Not so… great expectations
Friday, 23rd December, 1960
Sometimes it was
really difficult to go home. Even harder than leaving to go to school in the
morning.
‘Enjoy your Monday off school next week and remember what
Christmas Day is all about.” Mrs Locky never wasted unnecessary breath when the
class was all lined up and ready to go home.
At precisely four o’clock, on the ring of the huge brass
hand bell, Wee Missy forged her way out through the throngs as she exited Broadholm
Primary School Annexe where there were a couple of overspill classrooms. Her
class was one of the unfortunate ones in that it was housed in a decrepit and
ancient old building, the school roll being too large for all of the pupils to
be housed in the new school building. However, there was nothing to be done but
suffer the situation for a whole school year.
‘In the bleak mid-winter…’
The words of the Christmas Carol they’d sung that afternoon refused to go
away as Wee Missy said a fast farewell to some of her classmates. She felt utterly
bleak about it but she couldn’t avoid going home. Sunday was Christmas Day but
she knew that it wasn’t going to be a cheerful one for her. The events of last
week were going to catch up with her come Christmas Day. She stifled the tears
as she waved goodbye to her best friend June.
She’d been too
ashamed to share her secret with anyone but keeping silent about it was so
awful as well.
‘Frosty winds made
moan…’ It was far too glacial to hang about as she scurried further into
her scarf and tucked down her chin, the sky a dull leaden grey that heralded
more snow.
‘Earth stood hard as
iron…’ Her present classroom only had the narrowest casement window
imaginable with two bare electric bulbs dangling on a long electric cable from the
ceiling for illumination. She coped well enough with the miserable light but
the damp smell of mouldy wood seeped right up her nose and filled her head to
the point where she eventually forgot about it every day. The lack of heating
was a much worse problem. There were a few clanking radiators in the room, but
it was only the one right beside the teacher’s desk that blasted out any heat
and she wasn’t ever going to be naughty enough to share that space.
 |
| Nancy Jardine at middle marked with a cross, Mrs Locky (Lachowski) at back right |
Thank goodness that
Mrs. Locky didn’t know what she’d done or she’d be at the front of the class
for the rest of the school session!
She tugged her thick black blazer
lapels up under her tied over scarf to stop the wind whistling into the tiny
space at her parched throat that was full of dry tears. Her school blazer was
the only thing she had to wrap around her legs and toes to warm them up during
lessons and keep out the freezing draughts. Good thing it was made of wool
except it scratched her bare legs, her short socks leaving a lot of cold leg to
be warmed below her grey pleated skirt that just reached her knees. Of course,
the heating problem near Christmas time wasn’t only in her school annexe: her
own house was sometimes just as cold when she arrived home.
‘Water like a stone…’
The Christmas carol, written by someone famous called Christina Rossetti -
according to her teacher - repeated itself in her head as she purposely slid
down the icy pavement, some kind children having created the perfect glassy
walkway on the hardened icy snow that had been intermittently falling since the
previous Wednesday.
‘Snow had fallen, snow
on snow, snow on snow…’ Always a dreamer. As she speed walked past the
proper new Broadholm Primary School Building, the janitor having cleared a small
space outside the school gates, she imagined herself back in there the
following Christmas.
‘In the bleak
mid-winter, Long ago.’ Only built a few years ago, the main school had
really good radiators that made hardly any noise at all. She was sure she’d be
back there in the warmth the next year because it was only a couple of classes
who had to use the annexe. When the other new Primary school was built, in a
different part of her newly built housing estate in Glasgow, nobody would ever need to use the
annexe again.
Next Christmas would
definitely be very different because she vowed she would make sure that she
wouldn’t ever feel so bad about going home again.
‘Enough for Him, whom
cherubim, Worship night and day…’ The teacher had explained all the difficult
words but some of the old fashioned Victorian Christmas Carol was still hard to
understand so she skipped bits, in her head, as she wended her way home.
Being the Primary Five exile class was also hard to
understand. For her and her classmates, there was no playing outside at break
times in the tarmac playground areas that wrapped around the big rectangular
senior school block of the new school. The boys kicked a ball about on one side
and called it their football park. The girls strung themselves out and played
ball games at the gable wall. A tennis, or bouncy rubber, ball in each hand
they sang songs like “I’m Shirley Temple and I’ve got curly hair, I’m Betty
Grable and my legs are up to here…” Sometimes she didn’t remember all the
words of the songs but she just made them up to fit the tune, anyway. Or the
girls played with their skipping ropes and sang other songs as the two children
holding the ends of the double ropes ‘cawed’ in new kids to jump up and avoid
snagging the circling ropes. The new school was also great because it had lots
of wall to do hand stands up against it. There were empty bits of tarmac where
they could play hopscotch with chalk drawn ‘beds’ using an old shoe polish tin
filled with sand for a peever that they nudged along with a foot as they
skipped from one chalk-drawn square to another. When the grassy areas around
the school weren’t too muddy, or full of piled up snow, they sometimes played a
game of rounders, as well.
The annexe didn’t have a proper playground at all. There
were only small stone chips around the building and you slipped on them too
easily. Of course, the boys still tried to play football and got in the girls’
way as they stood in huddles nattering to each other.
‘A breastful of milk,
And a mangerful of hay..’ The school dinners were better in the new school
as well since they were cooked in the fancy new school kitchens and served hot
to the tables in the dining area. It was a bit strange calling them school ‘dinners’
because they were served around midday, but Wee Missy didn’t care what they called
them- she was lucky because she always had two hot meals every school day. One she
ate at school and the other at home because her dad only ate a sandwich around
midday and needed a hot meal in the evening.
‘Enough for Him, whom
angels Fall down before, The ox and ass and camel Which adore…’
In the Primary
Five annexe, they had to sit their school lunch plates on their cleared desks
and that was tricky because the slope of the desktop meant you had to keep the
plate steady while still using your knife and fork. The food served from huge
metal canisters and metal boxes was already cooling down by the time it was
dished out- even though the distance to the annexe wasn’t all that far. She
hated her dinner getting cold because the two-course school dinners were
fantastic to eat, much better than her mum’s cooking. Wee Missy loved all the
food at school, her especial favourite dessert being caramel flan and custard.
The only thing on the school menu that made her gag was the
kidney in the steak and kidney pudding but she’d learned to force it down. You
had to eat everything on the plate or suffer the consequences of Mrs. Locky’s
wrath because she wanted no scrap food to deal with! Wee Missy even relished
the tapioca, the ‘frogspawn’ that most of her friends refused to put past their
lips. For them, it was just as well that there was generally more than one
desert choice because nearly everyone avoided the tapioca and jam. For Wee
Missy that was great, because she always got an overflowing plate of tapioca,
and sometimes even seconds as well.
‘Angels and archangels
May have gathered there…’ Having passed by all the twinkling classroom
lights, darkness swiftly descending now, she thought of another thing she looked
forward to next Christmas. The lovely new light wooden desks in the main
building were absolutely perfect to sit at. She could lift the lid and store
her pencil case inside, with loads of room left for her biggest library book,
and her hat, gloves and even her scarf.
Oh, no! The thought
of her library books made her feel really guilty again. Why on earth had she done such a stupid
thing?
She looked despairingly up at the tenement blocks of houses
as she by passed them, some of which had twinkling Christmas trees in the
windows. Her own tree wouldn’t go up till that night or maybe tomorrow if her
mum was too tired. Her dad had already checked the fairy lights and had
replaced the bulbs that weren’t working properly so they were ready and waiting
for the tree box to be opened. She looked up again at the last ‘close’ of
houses at the end of the street. The Christmas lights were lovely against the
darkened brickwork of the buildings She’d bet there were lots of excited
children living in those houses who couldn’t wait for Santa to come and give them
unexpected presents.
Those good children –
unlike she was.
Deliberately setting aside her dismal thoughts, she
backtracked to visualising her classroom. Presently, all she had was a
scratched and ancient two pupil desk - the kind which was only a top with two
holes cut out for ink bottles to sit in. There was nowhere to stash away
anything underneath. That meant her woolly hat and other things had to be
stored at her wet feet and they never dried out properly.
The only good thing about the double desk situation in the old
annexe was that the combination of kids in the back row changed according to the
results of the weekly tests, so she regularly had a new neighbour.
‘Cherubim and seraphim
thronged the air..’ Her teacher read out the results and efficiently
reorganised the pecking order in the class room after lunch on Friday
afternoon. Wee Missy was always in
the back row, one of the top ten of the class and well away from the teacher’s
hugely long blackboard pointer that slammed down on those idle fingers in the
front rows. Her teacher liked to keep the naughty boys and girls close by her.
But she was just as
naughty as them!
As she turned into Kinclaven
Avenue, she watched one of her front row
classmates head down the hill to her house in Southdeen Road. Wee Missy’s mother would
have a fit if she was ever sitting next to that poor girl again, the girl whose
parents had to be a lot poorer than hers were because Ellen was a bit smelly
and was constantly lice and nit ridden.
‘But only His mother, In
her maiden bliss, Worshipped the Beloved, With a kiss.’ Earlier in the
school session, Wee Missy had been sent to the front of the class for talking
during the lesson. Only one afternoon of sitting beside Ellen and she’d gone scratching
home with more than her shame. Her mother had scrubbed the black Derbac soap
into her scalp even more ferociously than usual and used the bone fine-tooth
comb so hard that she’d almost gone bald. She never ever wanted nits again. The
kids at the back of the class were nit and lice free - as far as she could tell
- and she wanted to be sure she stayed that way forever.
She occasionally stamped at the razed frozen ice in the
puddles – proof that someone else had nipped along the route home even faster
than she was covering it. The mile and a half hike from school to her home was unexciting
except when she stopped at the Kinclaven play park, but even with gloves on it
was cold enough to freeze her fingers to the metal chains on the swings in
seconds and she was neither that daft nor that bored to attempt such an idiotic
diversion close to Christmas. Her school blazer and home-knitted grey hat, scarf,
and gloves weren’t enough to keep Jack Frost and his many icy friends from
biting her all over- just like the wooden seat would be permanently stuck to
her bottom if she sat on it. She needed to get to her house as quick as
possible to be out of the frozen wasteland around her but she also dreaded it.
The really big problem that had been making her sick for days now would be worse
when she stepped in her front door.
Feeling guilty was so
horrible.
‘What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?’ As she skidded her way down another pavement slide, she had
to admit that exhaling puffy white clouds was actually quite funny…till it
seemed to freeze the hairs in her nostrils. She’d read about how her nose
worked quite recently in an encyclopaedia that her much older cousin had given
to her.
She preferred the Enid Blyton books, and even the Biggles Adventures
that her cousin John had no use for any more, but when she’d no new stories to
read she propped up the encyclopaedia behind her pillow and read that. It had
some pictures and diagrams in it, but she’d have liked even more since some of
the information was quite difficult to understand, though she knew it was
intended for children.
‘If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb…’ She rewrapped her scarf right up over her nose and
smothered the next lines. She didn’t want to think about them at all. ‘If I were a wise man,
I would do my part…’ She hadn’t been
wise at all. Not at all. And that was why going home was so difficult.
‘Yet what I can I give
Him, Give my heart.’ Her mother had
done that but she’d messed it all up.
As she hurried past the Church of Scotland, other Christmas
carols that Mrs Locky had made her practise in class replayed in her head like her
dad’s scratched vinyl records.
‘Hark! the herald
angels sing Glory to the newborn King Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and
sinners reconciled!’ Her Nana would say that she had sinned something
terrible because of what she’d done last week. Now she felt really disgusted but
she only had herself to blame for that.
‘Joyful, all ye
nations rise, join the triumph of the skies, with the angelic host proclaim...’
Even though it was the last school day before Christmas, there hadn’t been much
joy in class. It hadn’t been much different from any other Friday except that
the carol singing had been for a whole hour rather than the usual Friday half
hour hymn singing. The teachers at school never talked about Santa coming down
the chimney, or about going to visit him in his grotto in Lewis’ shop in
Glasgow City Centre and there was never any mention of anyone ever going to the
pantomime at the Alhambra or the Pavilion Theatres, either. Christmas tree talk
only went on in the playground. Usual lessons went on in the classroom.
Everybody knew Mrs. Locky wasn’t really her teacher’s name
but most of the kids in her class couldn’t spell Lachowski. Wee Missy liked
Mrs. Locky most of the time but although her teacher might look round and
cuddly, the woman could wield her belt as well as the headmaster if anyone got
less than nine correct out of ten in the Friday Spelling Test. She’d tasted
Mrs. Locky’s tawse a time or two too many at the beginning of Primary Five, but
it had been an effective salutary lesson. Rote learning her spelling to
perfection was a challenge she never failed at now. Lachowski would never be
spelled wrongly either. Her times tables were faultless as well, though she
still had a lot of work to do to get the other bits as easy to reel off. To get
to twenty-two yards is equal to one chain wasn’t so bad but the next things about furlongs and miles
were harder to remember.
‘Silent night, holy
night…’ Wee Missy’s absolute all time favourite was reading. She loved all
the reading that was done in class - even the Road Safety advice that was on the back of the school
jotters that Glasgow Corporation provided - but she liked it even better when
she zoomed home to read the books she’d borrowed from the public library and
her weekly batch of comics. Her dad liked to read as well, which was brilliant
because every Tuesday evening they walked the two miles to the local Public
Library to change their books and walked even faster on the return trip. On
those occasions, her feet felt like they barely hit the pavement because her
dad was a really fast walker. He’d been a member of a harriers club as a
younger man and he did such a fast walk/run that she had to jog to keep up with
him on her much shorter legs. It was just as well that he usually carried her
books along with his own in his old army knapsack that bounced against his back
when they hurried home.
The thought of reaching home to read had her skipping up the
hill on Tallant Road
at a spanking pace but as she approached the shops near Carolside Avenue, her mood darkened
again.
She’d hardly anything
new to read. Even worse than that, next week was going to be so horrible!
A cold shudder passed through her, even colder than the
seriously icy atmosphere around her.
‘We three kings of
orient are, bearing gifts we traverse afar’
Christmas Day was supposed to be so nice: happy and cheerful, filled
with lots of lovely new surprises to open but that wasn’t going to happen to
her! She pretended that the sting at her eyes was just because the arctic chill
was gluing her eyelashes together.
Though at eight going
on nine years old, she knew better.
'Oh, star of wonder...' It was only Friday, but she’d already devoured the two
thinner ones of the three library books that she was allowed to borrow each
Tuesday. The big fat Enid Blyton Ship of Adventure Series book she’d vowed to
save for her Saturday reading. Those stories absorbed her for hours and sent
her places she could only dream of. She wasn’t going to start it when she got
home, she wasn’t! ‘I’m not. I’m not’
accompanied her till she passed the Newsagents shop close to her home on Rozelle Avenue. A
sort-of-a-smile almost broke free when she saw the Christmas advert for her
favourite comic in the window. The Bunty
had produced a special Christmas edition that week with an extra story in it!
That would mean an even longer time could be spent savouring her comics.
She
got The Bunty; The Judy; The June and
School Friend, and The Diana every
week.
She mostly hated her older sister- the four year gap meaning
almost no reason to like her sibling who was now only interested in boys,
especially the one who lived in a house opposite the Co-Operative Shop she’d
just passed. Meggie had always been a tomboy so it was difficult to understand
the girl who now went to bed every night with rollers in her hair that she
claimed would create a perfect style in the morning. The problem with Moody
Meggie was that her hair was totally straight and sleeping on uncomfortable
jaggy rollers didn’t make a bit of difference. Meggie’s hair was still straight
in the morning and didn’t do that curling under thing it was supposed to.
The best thing about Meggie was that her comics were still
ordered even though she wasn’t really much of a reader. Being a tomboy meant
that Meggie got The Beano; The Dandy; The
Beezer; and The Topper. Mean
Meggie pretended to read them all and
took till about Wednesday night before she’d pass them on to her but that was
good because there was always something new to read on Thursday after
school.
‘Guide us to thy
perfect light…’ As Wee Missy rounded the corner which led to her house on
Jedworth Avenue, she thought about the comics for this week that were going to
be such a treat to look forward to- the only drawback being that they wouldn’t
be delivered by the ‘paper boy’ till after five o’clock that evening. Sometimes
the package, rolled up tight in elastic bands, didn’t pop through the letter
box till nearer half past five and when that happened it was a really ghastly
wait.
What was she going to
read till they were delivered? Guilt made her last steps even harder to take.
Wee Missy approached the short flight of stairs which led up
to her block of flats and let out a deep sigh, sending a cloud of icy vapour
around her. She wanted to be in her house and out of the biting cold, yet she
could hardly bear it. Remorse sat even more heavily on her shoulder, a burden
that she’d repressed for more than a week, but she’d been brought up to face up
to consequences so she knew she just had to get on with it.
‘We wish you a Merry
Christmas…’ Knocking on Mrs. Irvine’s door, she summoned a chapped
lipped smile. Her neighbour across the landing was the keeper of her door key
because there was no one in her own house when she got home after school. At
eight and three quarter years old, she wasn’t regarded as being responsible
enough for that job- it would have been a disaster if she lost one of the only
two house keys that the family had.
“Hullo, hen. Was school good the day? Huv you seen oor
Thomas?”
'Good tidings we bring...' Her neighbour’s questions always came thick and fast and Wee
Missy’s answers rarely varied as she shook her head. Thomas was nearly the same
age as she was but was in a different class at school. He was nearly always
home later than she was because he mucked about with his mates on the way home
- even on freezing cold days. Michael Irvine was a couple of years younger and
was already home, eating biscuits and drinking milk like she’d just been
offered by Mrs. Irvine.
“Here’s your key, love. If you need any help, remember to
just chap.” Mrs. Irvine’s smile was always cheery as the key was handed over.
'To you and your kin...' It had only been two months since Wee Missy’s mother had
started in her temporary seasonal job at the huge Woolworth’s Department store
in the city centre of Glasgow.
Her mum had never been anything except a housewife since her mother and father
had got married, so the new job was taking a bit of getting used to. They were
all out early to catch a bus - her mum, Dad and sister - well before she had to
go to school. In the evening, her sister was supposed to be home before her dad
at five- thirty but Meggie rarely was. It was nearly half past six before her
mum returned. It wasn’t the loneliness that bothered Wee Missy when she
unlocked the door and went in to her house. Being alone was great.
She loved lots of peace
and quiet but that was what was now giving her guilty bad dreams!
‘We wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.’ Her heart sank even further as she dumped her school satchel
on the floor at the coat cupboard. She took off her almost solid frozen school
blazer, the wool so matted with frost it looked white instead of black. She
struggled to hang it up since her fingers had no blood at the tips. Her hat,
scarf and gloves had fared little better and stood up in solid heaps when she
dropped them, too.
Bypassing her parents’ bedroom was horrible since the door
was wide open. She couldn’t miss seeing the huge wardrobe that filled the space
alongside the window: that solid, dark wooden wardrobe with its generous shelf
at the top.
What had made her do
it? The house was as cold as her conscience.
The clock on the mantelpiece read twenty past four. That
meant ages to wait for something new to read. Chores needed doing, but her
hands were too cold. There wouldn’t be any hot water from the taps till the
immersion heater was switched on but she was allowed to boil the electric kettle
to make herself a cup of hot cocoa. Till the electric kettle boiled, she hugged
her cold fingers under her oxters to warm them up. When the sound changed to
that almost boiling splutter, she scooped out two spoons of drinking chocolate
powder into her cup and added some milk. Once it was mixed to a paste she
shakily added the boiling water and then stirred it furiously to mix it in. The
rest of the kettle of hot water went into the basin in the sink. Some cold
water added, she immersed her freezing fingers till they thawed out, yelping as
the blood warmed through to her fingertips.
'Oh, come all ye faithful...' Able now to wrap her hands around her cup, she took it into
her bedroom. Staring at her piles of already read books and comics brought
forth none of her usual excitement but she had to read something, or do
something else. She couldn’t just do nothing.
Straightening up the covers on her bed was easy but she
wasn’t climbing up to the top bunk to do her sister’s. She’d given up on
tidying her siblings mess ages ago. Slurping down the last of her cocoa, she
felt she’d almost thawed out.
'Joyful and triumphant...' She wasn’t allowed to light the coal fires that were in the
living room and bedrooms but she knew from the last few weeks that her lazy
sister wasn’t going to be home in time to set them. Having dumped her cup in
the water she’d used to warm her hands,
she washed the few other things from the morning – cereal bowls, a
couple of cups and some cutlery. She wasn’t great at peeling potatoes but she
knew it would help get the dinner ready more quickly if she got on with it.
And it would help to
atone a little bit for her sad misdeeds of the previous week.
‘Peace on earth, Goodwill
to men…’ One look was all it took for her to feel ill again. The
kitchen was opposite her mum’s bedroom, and that wardrobe just wasn’t going to
go away. Blocking out the sight of it with her hand she made her way into the
living room.
Her dad always made sure to leave ready some kindling for
the fire and the coal bucket was half full. She’d learned how to roll the
newspaper into spills so she set to work. It took a while but by almost five
o’clock, she had the fire set in the grate.
Wee Slavey in her
Bunty comic was always setting the fires and doing the menial chores in the big
manor house so it was a just enough punishment for her. How could she have been
so stupid as to drag that chair over to the top shelf of her mum’s wardrobe?
She wished so much that she hadn’t overheard her mum telling
her dad that she’d stashed away some things up on the shelf for the girls.
They didn’t have a
cat but her curiosity now almost killed her.
The stash of
unwrapped presents on the shelf included the Annual Editions of her favourite
comics. They were meant to be opened on Christmas Day but she had devoured them
the previous week- every single word. Even the last page which wasn’t a story
but about the people who had helped make the books.
Now she had no new
reading to look forward to! Tears dripped from her chin. She was so
disappointed in herself for taking away the excitement of Christmas.
'We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year...'
***
Sunday, 25th
December, 1960
Weak daylight crept through the curtain. Wee Missy wanted to
sleep all day long-even though it was Christmas Day. Pretending was going to be
so horrible. She’d managed to keep her awful guilty secret during Christmas Eve
but the day of reckoning had now arrived.
In previous years, Santa Claus hadn’t brought all that much
since her parents didn’t have the money for lots of gifts, but it had still
been very exciting to investigate the contents of the white pillow case that
had been left hanging at the end of her bed. There had usually been a new doll,
maybe a few jig-saws, some chocolate, hard boiled sweets and some fruit-
usually a tangerine, and if she was very lucky an exotic pomegranate. Of course,
the most important contents of her Christmas pillow case had been the Annuals.
She could hear her mum in the kitchen making breakfast and
her dad would be off soon for his Sunday walk- even though it was Christmas
Day.
“Are you two awake?” her dad shouted as his knuckles rapped
at the door. “Merry Christmas! Has Santa brought you anything this year? ”
Jumping out of bed she pretended to be excited as she opened
the door to him. “I don’t know yet.” She’d learned the previous Christmas about
the Santa and her parents’ secret but it was nice to keep up that pretence.
“Well, hurry up then. See what’s in that big stuffed
pillowcase.”
As Wee Missy delved into the bulging white sack her sister’s
head hung down from the top bunk, the rollers falling out of her hair.
“Thanks, Dad,” Meggie said as Dad passed up her pillow case.
Wee Missy’s dread turned to squeals of absolute delight as
her fingers rummaged around. There were so many presents in her pillow case.
She had a gorgeous new doll with the kind of nylon hair that could be combed.
More new jig-saws that she loved to put together and plenty of chocolate and
sweeties. The already read annuals were there….but there were also lots of
brand new books as well!
Enid Blyton books and
some of the Chalet School Series that
she’d just started to read. How could her mother have afforded such a lot of
presents?
Such a lot of books
she didn’t deserve.
Tears dripping down her chin she hugged her dad really tight
and then ran to her mum who’d just come into the room.
“Thank you. Thank you!”
Never, absolutely never, would she ever sneak a look at her
presents before Christmas again. She’d learned a very salutary lesson. She had
to be the luckiest girl in Glasgow.
Christmas was for
surprises!
ps. She did wonder where her mother had hidden the books she'd not read!
Slainthe!
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