Anecdote

This was Boxing Day evening, I can’t remember how many years ago.  I do know that it wasn’t the Oyster Christmas.  I used to love oysters, and I still do in my mind – like being a fish without the breathing difficulties – but since that Christmas, when oysters were reduced at Waitrose on Christmas Eve, and unwisely bought and consumed … I’m not going to expound.  Just in case you haven’t got the message: NEVER buy a reduced oyster, however cheap.  In fact especially however cheap.  But this is not about the Oyster Christmas.

Valiant dutiful service had been done.  Aperitifs, wines, sticky liqueurs or brandies or malts had been bravely conquered.  Several days’ worth of food too.  (Food decreases in volume at Christmas, it’s a known fact, there’s no other explanation.)  Increasingly incomprehensible games had been played; all the expected, and some unexpected, songs had been sung, or at least recited, through ever-broadening grins; conversations, arguments, discussions had blurred into each other, as they do.  Unwanted brandies and Baileys were sitting around, looking forlorn.

Somebody said: “Well…”  Alan opened a baleful eye and cast it around the room.  “Nobody goes to bed until I do!”  Then he started snoring.