The Socks of Christmas Past

Merry Christmas, Daddy-Bear!!

The Good Lady had beamed as she handed me a brightly coloured parcel.

Shucks, sugar cheeks. You shouldn't have.

I said as I frantically ripped open the parcel to reveal what was obviously going to be something something guitar.

It was a pair of stripey socks.

And the presents that followed were no better. In fact, they were all the kind of presents that old men would get.

There wasn't even a handwritten voucher for a beef curtain bullfight.

Even now a day later my thoughts keep turning to the lack of legend in my gifts.

I hadn't even gotten something knife'y.

What kind of Christmas was this?

I marched into the bedroom to give the Good Lady a grinchy piece of my mind.

She wasn't there. The door slammed behind me and I jerked around in fright. What the hell was going on?

Turning from the door, I leapt in the air and almost shit my knickers with fright.

There on the bed before me lay a strange wispy and ghosty shape. Like cigarette smoke, it hung gently just above the sheets.

My sphincter grumpily started to respond to mission control and as it did, I looked closer at the ghost hanging above the bed.

It was shaped like a Gibson Guitar.

How fucking odd?

Not so odd really...

The thing spoke, or at least, the voice sounded in my head and not through my ears like most things that spoke to me.

Were you really going to give the Lady a hard time because she got you a pair of socks? They were stripey... She knows you love stripey socks?

The ghost-thing uttered in my head.

Well, I...

I made to defend myself but could think of nothing to say. What the ghost-thing was saying was true. I had been going to give her double pelters for getting me shitty gifts. Where was the joy in that?

There are more things in life than receiving presents, don't you think?

The ghost-thing rippled slightly as if wiggling sexy hips that it did not have.

Hmmph, I suppose.

I grudgingly accepted.

The ghost-thing nodded happily which was a strange-looking thing indeed from a guitar.

Do I need to get the other two ghosts in, you know, Christmas present and Christmas yet-to-be? I will give you a clue, they're socks.

Sighed the sultry ghost guitar in my head sounding more and more like a sexy bizzum.

Idly I wondered if we would end up getting all ectoplasm'y on the sheets like Dan Ackroyd in that ghosty porn film from the eighties.

I shook my head. Sticking my pork truncheon into a Guitar, no matter how sexy and ghostly it was would almost certainly be a bad mistake.

No, you're right. I've learned my lesson. Socks it is. Christmas is about more than just getting funky stuff for presents.

I let out a hoosh of air as if I was sighing over a lesson that a ghost guitar had taught me.

I will leave you now. Remember, Christmas is about magic, love and the joy of giving...

The ghostly guitar started to fade and then it was gone.

Suitably chastened, I grabbed my Christmas socks and decided to put them on. Silly old me. Getting het up about what I had received and not just focusing on my family and the love that I shared with them.

Truly, Christmas was a time of joy and love.

I tugged the first sock on and looked down puzzled. What the funkz?

It was too tight??!

Seriously? Had the Good Lady got me socks for a midget?!

GAAAARRGGGGGHHH!!!!?!?! MUMMY-BEAR, YOU'RE A DEAD WOMAN!?!!