My brother regaled me about his Christmas morning in Belfast and it gave me quite the laugh.
He was still in his jammies, sorting out the roast potatoes, when he got a knock on the back window that made him jump.
His crazy neighbour’s face popped up, with his hands in a prayer gesture.
“I need a seriously big favour, mucker. Could you plate me up two dinners for me and my ma?”
My brother smiled. His neighbour went about his odd life caring for his elderly mother. It was the only job he ever had.
The irony was that he couldn’t drive and she could, so he had to almost pour her enfeebled body into the DLA car any time he needed to go somewhere – usually the offie.
He didn’t like cadging lifts, he would say repeatedly, while hinting that he needed a lift.
My brother paid no heed and was never guilted into anything that didn’t suit him, but his neighbour was relentless.
It could be a lend of a bottle-opener, tinfoil, a pillow case, a match, or a spray of Windolene on a single piece of kitchen roll – the man appeared at all hours with any excuse to hold forth.
His was a lonely life. He wouldn’t have been capable of a normal relationship (my brother’s words), so his mother became his ad-hoc partner.
He moaned and griped about her the same way some men do about their wives. And while his existence was sad, and he provided the world with zilch if you think about it, the sight of the Micra crawling up the Antrim Road with her squinting, and him beaming, bopping along to the music, never failed to raise my brother’s spirits.
“I know it’s a massive favour but wait to you hear what happened.”
His neighbour was at the table by now, sipping a breakfast can of Tennent’s. It was Christmas Day after all.
“It was my turn to cook the dinner and it’s all gone pear-shaped,” he explained.
“I thought I had it all sorted. She had said I had to actually cook the turkey this year because I got one of those pre-made ones two years ago and she didn’t like that.”
“What do you mean pre-made?” my brother asked.
“From Tesco. You know the wee box with the turkey and ham and wee sprouts and all.”
My brother gulped. That was their Christmas dinner.
“So, I figured out a plan, like. I got the Solid Rock Café to do it up for me. Wee separate trays of everything, all tip-top.
“When she goes for a kip after Mass and I was to peel the spuds and chap the carrots and all that malarkey, she wouldn’t even cop on.
“I mean, I have the spuds in the sink and all, like I’m gonna be peeling them.
“And I toul her the oven was on the blink, so our cousin was roasting the ham and the bird and drappin’ it over. Tickety-boo.”
My brother said he man emptied the tin of beer and pulled another from his track-suit bottoms. “Do you want a slug?”
He went on. “Anyway, what only happened? She is always poking about the fridge ‘coz she never staps nibbling stuff and I knew she would see the trays and I’d be rumbled, so I had to hide them and where is the one place she never looks? The hot press.
“She has a fear of plumbing. The pipes set her nerves aff.
“So I hid the food in the hot press but when I went to get them there now, they were covered in mould. I’d eat it, like, but…”
My brother, of course, saved the day. And they got soup and sticky toffee pudding to boot.
Odd or not, it was Christmas morning after all...