The Days of Christmas (an adventure in 12 parts)

Departing from the usual blog posts, I have been racking my brain hard, trying to figure out what to buy this Christmas. A grand gesture was – and is – required, you see.  Finally, after rather too much eggnog and an evening in front of the TV watching the Disney version of Christmas Carol, I have had my brilliant idea for this year.

How hard could it be to pull off, I thought? The ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’, recording the exploits of a young lover attempting to impress his fair maiden, was first published in 1780. That’s before the Internet, Ebay and Amazon. It’s also before the telegraph and the telephone. Available transport was confined to a horse and cart and the occasional narrow boat. If an Eighteenth Century Lothario could manage the logistics involved in making obscure gift deliveries on twelve consecutive days, then I could certainly match his achievement with all the advantages of modern technology at my disposal. After all, I had Google Search, on line shopping accounts, DHL and Paypal to help me. I was set… or so I believed… for the most romantic fortnight of my life.

Day One: Partridge in Pear Tree. Should be easy, I thought, only one required.

A web search using the key words reveals that PartridgePearTree.com is a retail website specialising in gifts. Personalised nail files, golf balls and fridge magnets are all available; pear trees and partridges are not.

More extensive desk research – rapidly conducted because we’re working on a deadline here – reveals that although Ebay only offers images of partridges in pear trees as part of this year`s design on the Isle of Man 50p coin (strange what Google throws up sometimes), six-foot pear trees in pots are available for 16.99. They are the real thing, though long past the annual harvest time when they might actually contain fruit. The supplier, however, has a 99.7% approval rating so I decide to divide and conquer, securing the tree with a single click of the ‘buy it now’ button. Now all I need is a Partridge.

This proves trickier than you might imagine. Partridge shooting season starts in September. By December, most of the online sales feature dead partridges, either with or without feathers. Some are advertised in frozen form, but since I don’t think they’ve yet perfected suspended animation, I take it that this too means dead and disfigured either by powder burns or shot through with holes.

At this point, I hit a further problem. Due to a bad glitch in BT’s broadband coverage, I spend most of the last afternoon before the holiday season on the phone to a lady in India, who knows nothing about partridges, little about the broadband network in Northamptonshire, and seems blissfully unaware of the imminent arrival of Christmas. Consequently, I run desperately short of time on my day’s shopping. Determined not to fail outright at this early stage, I’m afraid I have had to compromise.

To my shame, my true love will receive – on the first day of Christmas – a half-plucked half-defrosted bird with poorly disguised evidence of battle scarring (Polly, as I have named her, caught it just below one wing).  She is nailed to the branch of an out-of-season pear tree, though I have taken the trouble to fasten a large pink bow around the trunk.  I promise to do better tomorrow, if I can just work out what a turtle dove is.

Happy Christmas.