A Christmas story

Up until about 28 years ago, I ignored Christmas - as far as that is possible.

Halfway through the last family Christmas I ever spent with my sisters and parents (brother had been persona non grata long since), they all quietly found a moment to let me know that because of the stress, tension and undercurrent of resentment between them all, this was the last family Christmas they would ever be having. I said, "Me too" to all of them.

Of course, I was the only one to actually mean it, and for the next several years I would get a call from one of my sisters, telling me that Christmas would be at their house this year. "Have a nice time, then", was my annual response. It took them years to really believe that I meant what I said. I just couldn't be arsed with it all.

All my friends could not believe that I could turn my back on it, so I fended off many kind invitations to go round theirs as well. What I did instead was usually very enjoyable to me. 

One year I hired a pick-up truck and drove down to the far West of Cornwall. I arrived on Christmas night and was very lucky to find the only room at the inn  - at Penzance. I installed myself in the pokey little room and went down for dinner.

The waitress was beside herself with anxiety to have to break the news to me that the last pre-booked Christmas dinner had been allotted and there wasn't a single slice of turkey in the house.

"Fine", I said, "I'll have an omelette then." She looked at me in a way which suggested that she was expecting me to break down in tears, but I didn't. I'm hard...

Seated on his own at a table near me was a dour young man in a dark suit. I never saw him smile once. His dinner was placed before him but before beginning to eat, he uncorked the smallest bottle of Champagne I have ever seen and took a sip. He then reached for the cracker which had been placed next to the cutlery and pulled it with himself. He had to use both hands.

Of course, he won the biggest part of it so he extracted the joke, unwrapped it, read it without any change of expression, then folded it up again and put it on the table. I was transfixed with fascination.

Next, he took out the paper crown, unfolded it and placed it on his head. The passing waitresses looked at him with a mixture of pity and incredulity in their eyes, but he just stared at the tablecloth. He had his Christmas pudding followed by a coffee and brandy, butI could not bear to watch him anymore, so I went upstairs to my room and attacked a bottle of whisky I had brought with me.

Next morning I awoke inexplicably refreshed and energetic. After breakfast I got into the truck and drove down to The Lizard, where I was hoping to find a large block of the legendary 'Serpentine' stone of which the whole peninsular is made.

You would think that if cubic miles of Cornwall is made of the stuff, it wouldn't be too difficult to find a little piece of it to take home, but you would be wrong.

Serpentine varies in quality a great deal, and the best, most colourful outcrops are carefully guarded by the men who fashion it into the ashtrays and lighthouses in the little wooden sheds containing tools and lathes for the purpose, which are dotted here and there - sometimes precariously on cliff edges. They actually go out at night with dark lanterns to quarry it, so fearful are they of their secret stash being discovered by a rival ash-tray manufacturer.

I drove down to an isolated car-park on the very edge of a cliff with a 200 foot drop, having scoured the lanes and fields for a suitable source. I found some good pieces in roadside walls, but without demolishing the wall they had to stay where they were.

At the car-park there was a row of quarter-ton blocks of stone to stop anyone from driving over the cliff to their death. I got out of the truck and gingerly inspected them. I didn't want to attract too much attention.

I walked along the row and - to my amazement - found a beautiful, green, yellow and red veined piece sitting right there, like a king who has fallen on hard times and has had to resort to being a hotel commissionaire to make a living.

On the other side of the car-park there was another row of equally large, but much plainer blocks, sitting around and serving no discernable purpose. My only plan was a simple one, but I did not have much confidence in its success.

I went to the man who was sitting in a small wooden shack collecting money from tourists for parking their cars, and came straight out with it.

"See that block over there on the cliff edge?" I was feigning confidence. "Well I want to take it away and replace it with that block over there."

"Yes, ok," he immediately responded. "But make sure you do replace it. We don't want anyone driving over the cliff."

I asked him how much money he wanted - I was prepared with a bundle of notes  - and he answered '50p'. The price of the parking. He refused to take more.

It being Boxing Day, there were plenty of families out for a coastal walk, and I enlisted one of the larger men to help me put the block into the back of the truck. He was pissed-off about it but he did it for my sheer audacity in asking him.

Christmas was over and I had a quarter of a ton of fine Serpentine to show for it.