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Island News

Festive preparations

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There are a number of things you might be trying to celebrate in the coming weeks, so we bring you advice about how best to survive the festive season on Hopeless, Maine.

Those of you who like getting into the water need to keep in mind both the murderously low temperatures and the murderously hungry waterlife. We will undertake to believe that you’re just very keen on cold water and not that you have been driven to madness if you persist in this peculiar activity. Although I’m increasingly suspicious that some of you flapping about in lakes are so undead as to not feel the cold, which is rather indecorous of you.

Say no to night potato vodka. It is not magically better or safer right now, it will hurt you. Just don’t. Please.

After last year we are fairly sure that the dustcats know about Yule cats. They won’t actually kill you if you don’t have new clothes, but anyone looking especially shabby is at serious risk of being pounced on in unusually humiliating ways.

It isn’t Father Christmas, he doesn’t come here. The noise on the roof is almost certainly a donkey. Sometimes they poop down the chimneys. Whether you consider that a gift is very much at your discretion.

If anything has hatched out of your meese stocking, burn it at the first available opportunity.

For those of you who are more recently arrived, please be aware that there is an island tradition of knocking on doors after dark and asking for food and drink. If you don’t comply, there will be singing. You have been warned. Other things also knock on doors after dark looking for food, and the ones that do not do the singing are arguably much worse.

Please leave out at least one candle during the coming weeks. We have good traditions of keeping the departed well supplied. Angry ghosts are so unseasonal.

If you find yourself feeling that you are having fun, check your pantry supplies for signs of mould and fungus, and ascertain whether you are also feverish. In case of jollity, remember that the black eyed meese in your stocking are here to help you and that breathing in their peculiar aroma will put you back to normal in no time.

Hopeless

A plump, hearty stocking

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Now that spade up Sunday is behind us, many of you will be cultivating black eyed meese ahead of your festive preparations. If you missed the traditional gathering day, there’s still plenty of time to go rooting about under hedgerows and anywhere else dank that hasn’t entirely frozen over. You may end up with smaller meese, but you may still consider it worth the effort!

You may be tempted to feed them bones, gristle or even worms – there’s always someone who feels the urge to try a wider diet than is recommended. There are reasons for the recommended feeding of meese. On the correct diet, meese remain biddable and cooperative. Stray from this advice and the behaviour of your meese will become unpredictable at best.

Now is also an excellent time to start thinking about the stockings you will use over the festive period. The git moths will no doubt have had a nibble on any stocking you have tried to store from last year. While we make less of a tradition of stocking repair Sunday than we do spade up Sunday, you know what you have to do. Patch those holes! And if it turns out that your festive stockings are now more hole than fabric, you may have time to source or make a new pair.

Anyone who doesn’t have solid, hole-free stockings can of course expect to have terrible things happen over the festive period. If your black eyed meese tumble from the carelessly left holes, nothing will go well, and there’s also the issue of it being a really terrible omen. 

Obviously we all want the reassurance of good omens from our seasonal stockings, so I further remind you not to let git moths lay eggs in them. Do not put spoons in your stockings and leave them unattended. Do not allow anyone who has consumed night potato vodka to handle your stockings, or to breathe on them. No matter what Reverend Davies says, do not be persuaded to take any of them to any of his festive sermons, this never goes well.

And may your meese bless you with abundance and charm, and may their odours be pleasing. A reminder that an uncanny smell of vomit is not always a bad omen and can be the result of someone having tried to throw up discretely. You know who you are.