Our Christmas Stories
Christmas had been a bad time for me for most of my adult life. So I never used to send Christmas cards. I was suffering from extreme bah humbug syndrome.
One Christmas, about twenty years ago, I started to enjoy it. I had acquired two beautiful flatmates, both studying mime, who took me to loads of parties that year. This particular day, Janit had been to the theatrical shop and on the London Underground, on the way home from one of these parties, she showed me what she had bought, and I put the things on and wore them all the way home to the great delight of our fellow passengers. She took a picture of me in this condition, and I was so pleased with the result that I had thirty copies made and sent them to people as greetings. This is the picture.
I had not yet teamed up with Juliet, but we were part of the same social group. That year she made a card too, and I received one. I will put a copy of it here if she doesn't mind (and when I find it).
So when we did get together, it seemed a natural progression for us to produce a Christmas card together, and our first effort was a simple pictogram puzzle (which again will be here when I find a copy).
The next year we thought it might be fun to do a little story, and we have done one each year ever since, save for 1989, when we were going to Australia and didn't have time to do it. Instead, we put in a quotation that surprised a lot of people.
I had intended to put together a little book of the stories for Christmas 2000, but like many other plans it has had to be shelved. Instead, we have decided to put them on the web site for anyone who wants to look at them. Obviously, this year's is on there now, and others are being added as my timetable allows (some of them need to be retyped -- I haven't always had a Macintosh!)
So, if you're a new reader, take them slowly. They have to be very condensed to be fit into a Christmas card, and the diet might seem very rich. If you're a long-time reader, welcome again. We hope you enjoy them as much this time round.
2004 – The Year of the Megaphone
2003 – Alucelom or Christmas on Crypto
1999 - The Chocolate Christmas Tree
1996 - Greater Than The Sum... or How To Make A Molehill Out of a Mountain1994 - Charles and the Genie - a science fiction fairy tale
1990 - The Fractal Chromatagraph
1989 - Bishop Lancelot Andrewes
1988 - The Haunted Cashpoint
1988 - Joyeux No'Ell
1987 - Pictograph