Perhaps without knowing it, I was looking at the world all wrong; scanning my immediate surroundings for debris, destined to fall at my feet, instead of facing the future head on and looking bravely forwards. Perhaps, I was just doing what we often forget to do as adults: I was noticing beauty in the inanimate. But mostly, I was probably just a dopey kid who looked on the floor a lot.
Either way, I was dopey kid with an Austrian father and English mother. As far as I can tell, this style of international breeding has left me a hybrid with several character legacies. These include: the absence of a proper English football team; the need to decompartmentalise my smaller belongings, like miniature sewing kits from hotels, and old work name badges into labelled containers; and celebrating Christmas on Christmas eve.
Because both myself and my brother Horatio were Anglo-Austrian sausage children, Christmas Eve was when the presents arrived. Plus, my brother had basically (and I think rather selfishly) claimed/raped Christmas, by being born on the day (therapy suggests many psychological derivatives from this heinous act, but you forgive and move on), so Christmas Eve was absolutely the best evening of the year and an incredibly exciting family event.
This was a time of magic for me and even more visibly exciting energy for my younger brother. He would dart and skid around making monster noises out of his over-sized monkey head. My mother, for her part, would fill the house with an incredible array of hot, cold, sweet, savory, roasted, baked, handmade, bought-in, rolled-up, parceled, and insanely delicious morsels for us all to devour.
Most years we'd make a Hansel and Gretel candy house created with cakes, biscuits and icing sugar. It was constructed out of proper architect precision, was that house. Lights were put up all over the life-size family home, and a real, dead Christmas tree would slowly decay there in the corner of the lounge (or as my father called it "the sitting room").
More forest was mercilessly savaged in order to keep the fireplace stoked hot. As environmentally unfriendly as it might sound now, those days were idealic. We were told that embers of spider webs were troupes of tiny touch-carrying trolls, all marching up the great hillside. Hell, I even remember at least one time when we sat there - this sickeningly sweet family - all toasting English muffins on the open hearth. We were very lucky kids, especially at Christmas.
With characteristic technological embellishment, my father did the Christmas special effects for Santa. He'd go to incredible lengths, rigging up bells that ran out the kitchen window, round house and through a small "sitting room" window. The"sitting room" door was closed from about 5pm, so while the cooking was happening we'd creep up close and listen out for Santa, or as he was then known, Father Christmas. In total fear, we'd see if we could hear him doing his business in our front room.
We absolutely shat ourselves when we heard the bells from his boots dingling. Shit, how we'd shit ourselves. All trying to run away from my dad who was pushing us into the door. Ever since that dank Christmas when my dad took us to visit the evil Grampus, we knew that if you disturbed Father Christmas when he was doing his business, he pretty much fucked off and leave you nothing.
But we got away with not disturbing him and my dad got away with us never finding that string that connected my mother and Father Christmas to doing the business in the front room.
The normal protocol on Christmas Eve was this: door shuts at about 5pm (later as we got older), then mum gets on with doing the dinner, the remaining three go for a walk around the block Santa-spotting. All the while; my mum would scurry up and down the stairs, from cupboard to lounge, depositing piles of wrapped gifts as she went. It was brilliant bit of Anglo-Austrian engineering.
On the Christmas Eve of 1987, I found a pillowcase full of loot.
I say loot, because that has always been the description of said article; ever since I was a Beano reading Numskull (and obviously Beezer reading too). The word 'loot' is so comic-bookingly-English, that I can't help love it and will use it wherever it fits. It fits here, so will rip open a can of Ginger beer, tuck into my triangle-shaped peanut butter sandwiches and carry on with my treacherous tale of loot and skull-dugery.
The pillowcase full of said loot was opened to reveal a few porcelain figurines, a marble ashtray and an imitation pearl neckless. There might have even been a book - it was that uncool a find. No diamonds or guns or drugs. At the same moment I was eyeing the suburban kitty, the foiled would-be-burglar would surely have been cursing the countless rows of old people's bungalows he would have to enter before enjoying the fruits of his labour.
He probably looked inside the pillowcase and went, "Oh for fuck's sake, for the sake of fuck - pissing ornaments again." That'll teach him for robbing grannies at Christams.
But still, his wasted Christmas Eve was our delightful find, and we felt quite Indiana Jones about the old relics. We probably referred to the event as either, "exxy" (from the Latin; ex-cellent), or rad (from Neighbours, as in, "that's one radical mullet you have there Shane").
It was unfortunate that nothing in the stash was of greater value. Needless to say, if it had been, my dad would have insited we keep the find for ourselves. He wasn't adverse to a little thieving my father. But on this occasion he reported it to the police; we got a bag of sweets from a relieved granny and that was that.
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