Nightmare Before Christmas

 

The Nightmare Before Christmas doesn’t refer to one of the best films ever, but to our homage to it – our outfits. Our sister wanted nice photos for our niece’s first xmas, so we thought of dressing in Bah Humbug dresses we’d found on the Internet. (We don’t do xmas). Then our scrooge sides got the better of us & we decided it’d be cheaper to just stick some tinsel to our own dresses & clip some fake mistletoe into our hair – us with mistletoe is most guys’ idea of a nightmare. Which was proved by the only guy we got to kiss was our lovely grampy.

    Our damn car, Reapers is finally purring again after his head gasket replacement. We ended up doing it twice because we snapped the water pump bolts off in the head, so it had to all come back off again so they could be drilled out. The second time round we got it stripped in an hour. Then we put a heat plate in the wrong place, meaning he was sucking in air & wouldn’t start. Oh and there was the small problem of a fire. A combination of spilled fuel, too much carb cleaner & a shorting starter motor wire = whoosh! Panic stations. Our mum was shouting “it’s on fire!” Lynx was shouting “Where’s the extinguisher?” Cat was shouting “it’s in the boot!” Then it was like an episode of Fawlty Towers when we had to read how to use the damn thing as the flames were growing then pointed the wrong bit at the flames, resulting in chemical powder all over the engine bay. It took a while to clean up. Happily, he’s forgiven us & now starts. We just have to sort out a leak & change the oil & filter. He was just the latest in a long line of things that have caught fire under our command. The others being the cooker (twice, luckily it was electric), the hoover, the toaster & a candle holder, resulting in a fireball rushing towards the polystyrene kitchen ceiling tiles. They’ve now gone. Reapers is the only one to have survived an igniting. As our mum says, if we had brains, we’d be dangerous.

    On the writing front, we’ve just sent off 2 short stories to a competition. 1 about a very unChrismassy Santa who’s arrested for drink driving & tries to use his celebrity status to get off. It’s been 1 of our favourite stories to write, though in parts, we were laughing so hard, we couldn’t type. The other started off as a 5000 word short story then we cut it to 4k for the competition then liked it so much we decided to turn it into a novel. It’s coming along nicely.

    We’re trying to think of a non-Christmassy thing to do this year. Every year we make a point of spending the day doing the most non-Christmassy thing we can think of. Since we stopped it at 18, we’ve taken our dogs to the beach, watched horror films, unblocked the drains, sprayed flames on our cars & last year we redecorated our bedroom. The other years we can’t remember. We’re thinking maybe we’ll do the oil change, or write, or go ghost hunting, or think of something else. There was nearly an argument this year over the tree. We didn’t want one, but our mum thought we should get one for our niece. In the end we compromised on the fibre optic winter tree that’s posing with us. The lights on it were white, but we thought that was boring, so our mum came up with a great idea, got some OHP pens & coloured in the disc inside. It now has colour lights. She’s a genius.

 

For those who do celebrate xmas, have a creepy Christmas & a haunting New Year. For those who don’t, do what we do and just enjoy watching the world go completely crazy over one pointless day. Everyone should try banning it just for one year. Christmas as an outside observer is far more fun. Here’s to no Christmas shopping, no Christmas debt, no Christmas dinner with The Family, no arguments over the TV and best of all, no Christmas!

 

C L Raven. Bah humbug.

Comments

[Chris Allred]

You guys rock! You should do Christmas just to freak people out, but do it in July. Pull a tree into the house, and make cereal for Christmas dinner. Just a thought...have fun in life.

[LegendPress]

Aw, cheers Chris. Sorry we're late replying, we've been really busy & haven't logged on since we posted that. It's nice getting wicked comments. Feel free to keep commenting.

C L Raven

[LegendPress]

sorry, forgot to mention, we actually did have cereals for Christmas dinner. Great minds. But then we have cereals for dinner every day, but we are a bit weird, as we've probably guessed. Like the idea of doing it in July - we like to be unpredicatable. Darkest wishes
C L Raven