
‘Merry Christmas to you all,’ called Neville the part-time barman. And the folk of The Swan, with
their drinks in their hands took to flocking about him at the bar.
Omally excused himself from his near-naked and frost-bitten unofficial bride-to-be and stumbled in
through the rear door, gathering up Jim Pooley, whose women had deserted him and whose keyhole eye
had snow blindness.
‘Three cheers for Neville,’ quoth Omally, and the cry went up.
Neville cleared his throat, made a brief speech of thanks, blissfully devoid of time-wasting and
sentiment, rubbed his hands together and to much applause applied himself to the nearest parcel. It
contained an elegant set of cufflinks with matching tie clip, wrought from discarded beer bottle tops. It
was a present from Wally Woods, Brentford’s foremost purveyor of wet fish.
‘Nice one,’ roared the crowd. ‘Very tasteful.’
Wally accepted these ovations modestly. ‘It was nothing,’ he said.
‘Correct,’ agreed the crowd. ‘We were being sarcastic.
The second gift was something of an enigma, being an item which appeared to be neither animal nor
vegetable nor mineral. There was much of the mythical beast to it, but even more to suggest that its
antecedents lay with the sprout family. Neville held it at arm’s length and ogled it with his good eye. He
rattled it against his ear and cocked his head on one side.
The crowd took to murmuring.
The bearer of this gift stepped hurriedly up to the bar and whispered words into Neville’s ear.
Neville’s good eye widened. ‘Does it, be damned?’ said he, rapidly removing the thing to below counter
level. ‘Most unexpected,’ adding, ‘just what I always wanted.’
Pooley’s present proved to be of extraordinary interest. Once naked of its newspaper wrappings it
displayed itself as a square black metal box, approximately six inches to a side, with a slot at the top and
bottom.
Neville shook it suspiciously.
‘It’s a thing patented by my granddaddy,’ said Jim, ‘called Pooley’s Imp rover. It converts base
metal into gold.’
‘Well now,’ said Neville, making what is known as an ‘old-fashioned face’. ‘That’s useful.’
‘And fully practical.’ Jim popped a copper coin into the top slot. Grinding sounds, suggestive of
gears meshing, issued from the box and within but a moment or two, something which had every
appearance of a golden sovereign dropped into Neville’s outstretched palm.
Neville held it between thumb and forefinger and then took a little bite at it. ‘Tis genuine,’ said he.
‘My thanks, Jim. Here, hang about, what is that funky smell?’
The beer-steeped air of The Flying Swan had suddenly become permeated by a ghastly odour,
suggestive of rotting eggs or the-morning-after-the--big-Vindaloo bathroom.
‘My goddess!’ Neville drew back in alarm. ‘It’s this coin!’
The Swan’s patrons dragged themselves into a broad crescent, amid much nose-holding,
drink-covering, coughing and gagging. ‘Get that thing out of here, mister,’ shouted someone. A kindly
soul, eager to help, swung wide The Swan’s door, only to vanish beneath an avalanche of snow. Neville
hurled the stinking object into the street and a rescue team of helpers dug out their companion and
rammed home the door.
Neville gave Pooley the coldest of all fish eyes.
‘There are certain flaws in the process,’ Jim
explained. ‘The granddaddy never did get around to ironing them all out.’
Neville folded his brow, fanned his nose with a beer mat and pushed the offensive black box aside.
The crowd moved in once more.
Neville unwrapped a Santa’s grotto composed of used pipe cleaners. ‘Mine,’ said Old Pete, patting
his Fair Isled chest. A Miss Magic Mouth inflatable love doll, that no-one would own up to, a flagon of
sprout gin, which many did, and all bar John Omally wished to sample. A hand-painted facsimile of The
Flying Swan. Beaten ‘pewter’ tankards, bearing incongruous words such as Heinz upon their planished