The Twelve Days of Christmas or the dangers of online shopping

December 13th

Darling!  What a wonderful and truly unusual present!  Admittedly, the ground’s a bit frozen at the moment for planting pear trees and housing the partridge is a bit of a struggle, as it won’t fit inside the budgie’s cage.  Still, we’ll find a way.

Your True Love xxx

December 14th

Darling!  Two turtle doves!  How sweet – but the budgie’s cage really isn’t that big and I’m not sure they and the partridge get on all that well. The cat’s enjoying having them in the house though.  Er... what exactly am I meant to do with them?  Also, I think you should check your Amazon account as you seem to have repeated the order for the pear tree and the partridge.

Your True Love xx

December 15th

Darling, I really think we need to talk.  Three French hens are a very unusual present, and I suppose the eggs will come in useful – or would do, if the poor creatures weren’t worried by the partridges. There really isn’t room in the flat for them all and the feathers are making me sneeze. The budgie is now deceased.

The window is now beginning to look very crowded with all the pear trees on the balcony outside.

 Please check your Amazon account!

Your True Love x

December 16th

Look, what’s with all the damn birds for Pete’s sake!  I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but the hens, the doves and the bloody partridges are enough to be going on with without four calling birds!  And more hens, doves and partridges.  And another ruddy tree!  Did I ever tell you I wanted to live in an aviary? Or a forest?  The cat’s given up and left home, the kitchen is full of feathers and the furniture is ruined – simply ruined with all the bird poop!  Stop it. Have a word with Amazon, will you?  Something must have gone wrong with your account.

Your True Love

December 17th

Okay, five gold rings are nice.  Thank you for those.  But enough with the birds! I couldn’t believe it when the postman delivered another batch of hens, doves, partridges and calling birds.  The noise is deafening and the neighbours are complaining.  The tree is on the balcony with the others. The balcony can’t take much more. Oh, and check your ruddy Amazon account!

 Your Love.

December 18^th

Are you having a laugh?  Six geese.  Six geese!  I can’t stop them laying eggs and who wants goose eggs?  Don’t you know that geese are lousy mothers?  They just drop their eggs anywhere, so the kitchen is a mass of egg-shells. 

The balcony has now collapsed.

Your former Love.

December 19th

I went to have a bath and what did I find?  Seven swans swimming.  Look, mate, you seem to be intent on driving me to a nervous breakdown, but you might at least let me have a bath in peace.  The bloody swans ate the soap and swallowed the loofah, then hurled all over the bathroom floor – which I can hardly see anymore because of all the feathers and egg-shells – and didn’t you know that swans have lousy tempers.  I know I loved my little budgie and was always fond of birds, but enough is enough. 

I see you’ve thoughtfully included yet another pear tree with your order.  It’s planted in the car-park.  Any more birds and I’ll bury you underneath it.

I can’t believe I was ever your True Love.  I must have been mental.

December 20^th

Arrggh!!!!  More birds and yet another tree!!  And – this is the weirdest thing yet – eight milkmaids, complete with cows, arrived and said you’d sent them.  They’re outside, by the collapsed balcony.  I will not have eight cows in the flat.

December 21^st

Did you think I needed cheering up?  Because you’ve got a funny way of letting me know.  Along with yet more birds, another tree and yet more milkmaids and cows, I’ve had a disco invasion.  Nine ladies – I use the term loosely -  with skyscraper heels and skirts so short you could hardly see them, barged in, turned the ipod to max, hung up a disco ball and danced all night, complaining all the time about the lack of talent. No blokes.  I suppose your next bright idea is to send a load of guys to keep the ladies company.  That’s a joke, by the way.

December 22^nd

OK, enough.  Ten Lords!!! And the usual consignment of birds, trees and milkmaids.

December 23^rd

Pipers??? Who asked for pipers? And where did you get the idea that bagpipes should be played indoors?  All I can really say is that with all the geese squawking and hens clucking and doves everywhere, I can hardly hear the pipers.  You are seriously weird.

December 24^th

Dear Mr Truelove,

Our client, your former fiancée, has contacted us with regard to the harassment caused by your so called “gifts”. When twelve drummers arrived she retired to a Home For The Bewildered and instructed us to send you the keys to the flat. 

Therefore we would take it as a sign of your good intent if you could immediately remove the following items, viz:

twelve partridges, twenty two turtle doves, thirty hens, thirty six calling birds, forty two geese and forty two swans, a total of a hundred and eighty four birds.

We also insist that you persuade the forty maids with their forty cows, the thirty six dancers, the thirty Lords, the twenty two pipers and the twelve drummers to remove themselves to more suitable accommodation forthwith. 

The twelve pear trees need to be uprooted and removed from the car park.

The forty gold rings will be retained against the expenses of renovating the flat.

We wish you the compliments of the season,

Yours,

Ms Carol Christmas (lawyer)

Curtain

So Poirot finally breathed his last in Curtain, an outstanding performance by David Suchet, added and abetted by Hugh Frazer. 

To tell the truth, it’s not my favourite book.  I’ve read it, of course, but it’s painful to see the jaunty, confident Poirot old and ill and – finally – dead.  I hate the hero dying!  I remember how traumatic it was when, at the age of eleven or thereabouts, I first read The Final Problem where Sherlock takes a dive off the Richenbach Falls.  I didn’t know what was coming and I remember my sense of absolute shock, made the more intense by the fact there wasn’t anyone who could understand how upsetting it was.  I mean, when The Final Problem was published, there was an outbreak of shocked grief, but I was about eighty years too late for the funeral.  Ho hum.  Sherlock sprang back from his watery grave but there’s no return for Poirot.

Apart from HP’s departure though, there’s other reasons why Curtain misses the bus.  Agatha Christie wrote it in the Second World War, together with Miss Marple’s final outing, Sleeping Murder, but neither book was published until the 1970’s.  Of the two books, Sleeping Murder, with its genuinely creepy, claustrophobic opening, as Gwenda, the heroine, finds the house she’s brought by chance becomes eerily familiar, is the most successful.  There may be odd anachronisms in the book, but they don’t hit you in the eye as they do in Curtain, where the action staggers uneasily between the late 30’s and the 1970’s.  Apart from anything else, how old is Captain Hastings?  Granted that he was wounded on the Somme in 1916, he must be at least ninety and, even if we turn a blind eye to the question of age, I just can’t see him wanting to poison Allerton, however protective he felt of his daughter, Judith.  It’s just not dans son character, as Poirot said on numerous occasions in other circumstances.  The Hastings we know – decent, impetuous and with a bit of a temper – would have wanted to knock Allerton’s block off, not poison him.   And Poirot as a murderer?  After having been assured, many times, that he “Does not approve of murder” I can’t help feeling that’s not dans son character either. 

I think the truth of the matter is that Agatha Christie was fonder of Miss Marple than Poirot.  In her autobiography she testifies to the importance of two elderly ladies, her Granny and her “Aunty Granny” as she was called in her upbringing.  There’s also a letter she wrote, on finding some carefully stored household goods – linen and pins and so on – saying, “You can see where Miss Marple comes from.” 

Poirot, on the other hand, she often found exasperating.  This feeling is turned to great comic effect when she has her alter-ego, Ariadne Oliver, go off on one about her detective, Sven Hjerson, in the brilliant Mrs McGinty’s Dead.

“How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man?  I must have been mad!  Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland?  Why a vegetarian? Why all these idiotic mannerisms he’s got?  These things just happen. You try something – and people seem to like it – and then you go on – and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life.  And people write and say how fond you must be of him.  Fond of him?  If I ever met that bony, gangling  vegetable-eating Finn in real life, I’d do a better murder than any I’ve ever invented.”

Robin Upward, to whom these remarks are confided, stares at her in reverence.  He suggests that it would be a marvellous idea to have a real Sven Hjerson murdered by Ariadne.  He suggests (watch out for the Curtain reference!) that she could make a Swan Song book of it, to be published after her death, to which Ariadne stoutly replies, “No fear! What about the money?  Any money to be made out of murders, I want now.”

The truth of the matter is that Curtain is a very good idea, but (even the best of writers have weak spots) Agatha Christie wasn’t the right author to make it live.  And I don’t like Poirot dying. Sad times.