We had a lot of people for Christmas lunch, that year, 1987, in Daisy Lane, about twelve, I think. It  came into my head to write a Christmas story as after lunch entertainment, keeping a sort of traditional theme going. The amazing thing is not that the whish was father to the deed but that I was sober enough to read it. It went down very well, Dorothy, Jacky’s mother, was crying with laughter. It might be that its best appreciated after a good lunch and numerous bottles of wine. BACK   My most memorable Christmas. A true story. I suppose it must have been the year the turkey had the cat. It was in the tenth year of our glorious and enlightened monarch. ( I refer, of course, to Elizabeth II, not Margaret I. ) A royal sentiment I may express now. At the time, though, it would have been most inappropriate, with reference made rather to the fourteenth year of the Republic, I being 50% of the Irish persuasion and finding myself located, at the time of this tale, in that most remarkable of countries. It was to have been a traditional Yuletide. That is to say, a strictly family affair, though that circumscription lost its exclusive connotations when it is realised that for fifteen miles in every direction the whole population was related. In this case, when one talked of family, one referred to 'close' family. This word 'close' puzzled me, images of a cosy intimacy were quickly dispelled on realising that several of the relatives who might have qualified for the title 'close' had not spoken to each other since last Boxing Day and had only reached an uneasy detente after the service on the last Sunday of Advent, when the protagonists, or rather the participants in the forthcoming feast had to meet at the house for tea and to decide who was going to do what. The house was the rudest of stone cottages. No services whatsoever. An outside toilette, that was peripatetic, Grandfather continually having to move it, when the hole it stood over became full, a necessity that gave rise to much covert amusement among the children when, late at night, we would hear one uncle, or another, returned from the hostelry, crashing about in the garden, shouting, 'Da, where’ve you put the bloody midden now?' One unexpected bonus accrued from this fact of the movable faeces, it was that we had the best cabbages in the County, and cabbage constituted our sole intake of vegetable matter, potatoes going under the rubric of a staple. I often thought that the human function in the ecology of that small corner of the world was as a perambulatory device for the begetting of more cabbages. This sobering idea came to me in one of my philosophical ruminations, perched above the hole in the midden, usually after having read the square of local news pinned to the door. One sees the world through very different eyes when one considers that human beings were invented by cabbages. All around us we see individuals, sometimes whole groups who, realising this truth on some subliminal level, passionately aspire to cabbage hood, futile ambition. The cottage architecture had been arrived at through necessity and Guinness, that is to say there wasn't a single right angle, horizontal, or vertical in the whole structure. Long before Einstein, the unknown builder had known that the shortest distance between to points was a curve. There was evidence that he had speculated several times on a wiggly line. There was a large, stone-flagged kitchen that constituted the heart and soul of the house; a huge open fire contained the perpetual flame; a table of Brobidingion proportions; various settles, dressers, chairs and family mementoes. It was a warm and human place, illuminated, at night by that most flattering of glows, the Tilley lamp. So this, like all the others, was to be a traditional Christmas, that is to say, moments of controlled panic strung, like beads, on the thread of chaos. The most important, single, unassailable focal point, that which the whole family revolved around, like whirling Dervishes, the object occupying centre stage, Sphinx-like, immutable was, of course, the turkey.  Now the family never paid for its bird and yet, we always had the biggest in the village. How was this so? I can hear you mentally asking yourselves in your sleep. Well it was like this...... Grandfather had The Gift. As you know, when a turkey is newly hatched it is impossible to tell, for several months, its sex. This is a problem for the turkey rancher who, in order to facilitate an immediate profit, must sell off a proportion of his young birds to the locality, it being the tradition of rustic folk to rear their own bird on household scraps. A female bird, providing eggs in the interim and having the physiology to grow to the most ample and succulent of proportions, fetching a higher price than the male, which is usually retained by the rancher, gelded at the beginning of Advent, fattened up and sold in the town to the undiscerning. It is a very rare man who can sex a turkey, newly hatched and Grandfather had this most mystical of talents. He would tell you, himself, that he didn't know just how he did it. In the prescience of a hatchling an inner peace would steal over him. If his right arm tingled, it was a male, the distaff, of course, denoting a female. He never made a mistake .......... except once. His fee for this service was several crates of Guinness and the pick of the birds, and it was only owing to the fact that the donkey had gone lame, which meant he had to dispose of his fee on the spot, as it were, which gave rise to a tingling sensation in the whole of his body, so confusing his supernatural powers in the selection of the family bird, all of which resulted in that most heinous of embarrassments, this Christmas would see the family eating a stallion turkey. Now gelding, to a certain extent, like sexing, is a natural gift bestowed by the creator on the most diverse and, sometimes, most undeserving of people. There are many natural gifts and we all have at least one, though many of us may not know it. There might be several natural but latent sexers and gelders in the audience. Unlike sexing, gelding is also an art, requiring an adroitness and speed outside the ordinary. The stallion turkey will sense its approaching fate and will go to enormous lengths to protect those orbs of masculinity so dear to us all. The gelder must fix the bird with his eye, approach it slowly and cautiously, gently swaying and crooning some tune to lull it. (Each gelder has his own particular favourite, our gelder used to hum 'After the ball is over', but that's bye the bye.) Then, like lightning, the arms reach out, the bird is upended, one bite and its all over. The unkindest cut of all takes but a moment, and the bird is truly more happy and content for it, if a trifle bow-legged. There is a lesson for us all, I feel. The turkey had been locked in the barn since Michelmas. Unable to look on the family shame, Grandmother had fed it through a slot and had done nothing to dispel the local rumours that this year’s bird was to be a record breaker in its enormity. In the house, the bird was never mentioned and, as Advent approached, Grandfather wracked his brain to find a way to get the gelder to do his work without the whole population discovering the truth of our turkey in the closet, as it were, the gelder being renowned for his loquacity as well as his sharp teeth. Various plans and strategies were muted, the most drastic concerning Grandfathers last marriageable daughter. Discussions with her, my prettiest aunt, always ended in tears, the last word my Grandfathers, delivered in his best old prophet bellow, as she ran to her room, 'Its not everyman has a God given trade for life.' Fortunately, for my aunt, fate took a hand and delivered us all a timely reminder that mortality is the lot of all men. It was like this. The gelder, like my Grandfather, always received a portion of his fee in a quantity of libation, for obvious reasons he tended to forego the scant pickings which were the leftovers of his trade. A certain wise woman, though, who lived in a caravan at the back of the church and 'did' for the priest, was reputed to create a marvellous unguent from these portions, said to have miraculous, restorative powers and known locally, for some reason, as 'stiffener'. The gelder had been working at a nearby turkey ranch. The rancher also specialised in the export of prize bulls and dyed lambs wool. In fact he was the biggest lamb dyer and bull shipper in the province. At the same time a bull gelder was down from the North, to be used on inferior beasts. He was known locally as 'the de-bollocker'. These two itinerant gentlemen, after the days work, proceeded to familiarise themselves with the liquid portion of their fee, which led to a heated discussion as to the respective hazards of their calling. Each was determined to out machismo the other. The long and the short of it was that only a wrestling match would do. In deference to the Northerner’s wider learning, he had read 'Sons and Lovers', a book banned in the more conservative South, they fought naked. The Northerner, apparently, was the most deft and quickly had our man in a complicated hold called a 'double fold, over and through Nelson'. In desperation, and presented with the sight of two pendulous, hairy gonads dangling before his eyes, our man struck below the belt. His razor teeth bit out and the fight was over. The Death Certificate said our man died of self immolation, some said he bit off more than he could chew, but the majority of the congregation were content to observe that cheats never prosper. The incident gave rise to a wide spread saying, epitomising the essence of country wisdom, I translate from the Gaelic, 'Sure, he's so crooked, he could bite his own bollocks.' Back to the stallion turkey locked in the family arbour. All plans and intrigues were academic now. There wasn't another turkey gelder near enough to get to the small holding in time for the first Sunday in Advent. As is well known, the Catholic Church expressly forbids the de-bagging of turkeys after this date. Our shame and trepidation was growing. To acquaint you with some little known Natural History, the American Indian, before the horse was introduced to that continent, as part of man-hood initiation rites, was required to rope and ride a stallion turkey, numerous on the wide plains of his land. Such was the ferocity of the beasts, only the very bravest of the braves survived. This was the main reason the place was so under populated and a contributory factor to the easy conquest of the armoured Spanish, who were impervious to the quick feet and the staccato attack of the beaks of these fearsome birds. By middle Advent we had reinforced the barn twice and had excavated a ditch around it, filled with sharpened stakes. The bird had led a solitary existence, its deep throated call the only thing to advertise its presence, apart from sporadic crashing and the sound of splintering wood. Household scraps had long since been forgotten. It was a full time job, taken in turns, on a shift basis, to shovel enormous quantities of meal, potatoes and cabbage through the enlarged slot. Occasionally, we would catch a glimpse of a great albino shape ululating in the confines of the barn's interior. We shuddered, even as we salivated. Two weeks before the festive feast we began feeding it an exclusive diet of sage and onion, chestnuts and breadcrumbs. The campaign for its demise, orchestrated by my Grandfather, with the help of the local Brigade of the I.R.A. was well underway. All was ready. Let me introduce the missing character in this story, the family cat. Like most farm cats, raised on a diet of rats and kicks, it was the size of a small horse. As a kitten it used to avail itself directly of the udder juice provided by the dairy cows on the adjoining land. Before it was half grown it had sucked several cows inside out. We tried to blame Protestant Satanists, but the farmer knew. He erected a fifteen foot, lethal voltage electrical fence. This caused Grandmother to be continually nagging the children, when they went out, 'Have you your galoshes and rubber gloves on?’ The cat was a beast, but beautiful. To see its great leap, eclipsing the sun as it landed on the roof to do its business down the chimney, was to see poetry in motion. It was elegant and a loner, disdaining the companionship of man and its own kind. A couple of days before Christmas, the Boys gathered at the house after dark, blacked skin, balaclavas and a motley collection of antique guns. Whispered voices spoke of 'the owl times'. The weapons were checked and three rusty grenades, festooned in tinsel, had pride of place in the perpetually empty fruit basket. From a bedroom window I saw the secretive band approach the barn, their stealth hampered, somewhat, by the fact that each trooper was dragging a crate of Guinness. At the signal from Grandfather, 'Get that bird', they attacked. The grenades were thrown, one actually exploding. As the smoke cleared, a large hole, in the side of the barn, was revealed. I remember the moment, vividly etched on the slate of a young but inquisitive mind. The moon shone pale and remote, the men stood like tar statues, silhouettes outlined against the whisping, grey, marsh gas, fingering its way from under the hut over the midden, a timeless moment. The tableau was shattered by the apparition of the cat who, with one mighty leap, seemed to jump over the moon and disappear through the charred orifice in the wall of the barn. There was a terrible, awful commotion, like a thousand devils unleashed. I shall remember it until the day I die. As with ducks, turkeys are susceptible to imprinting. It is common knowledge that a duckling will accept the first moving object it sees as its mother. It is less commonly known that turkeys, which, as Freud observed, are Polymorphous Perverse, see their first moving object as their 'fixe amour', their love object. It can be the only explanation. When the commotion died down and silence reigned, the men cautiously approached the barn. They entered and soon reappeared dragging, on long ropes, a huge, shapeless mass. In the gloom I thought I could espy the shapes of a two hundred pound turkey and a two hundred and fifty pound cat. A moon beam struck from behind the clouds to land, like a celestial caress on their touching heads. In that moment I knew in my boyish, unformed virgin way that those two beasts had expired from ecstasy. There is little left to tell. The rest of the story I pieced together later, when I was older and more privy to adult things. It seems it was impossible to extricate the feline from the avian, such was their combined passion. They were plucked and shorn and dressed as befits such great and terrible lovers, with butter and bacon. They were wrapped in brown paper painted with aluminium, this was before tinfoil, and reverently cooked. Grandmother made her usual magic and everything arrived at the table, piping hot and at the same time. On that day she could make cabbage festive. The strange thing was that not one in the company remarked on the fact that this year there were six drumsticks. BACK