Bad Santa: Ten Naughty Christmas Stories

By Sedley Proctor, Tony Henderson and M T Sands

Does Christmas always have to be a show? Or do you prefer it home alone? Do you dress for the after-glow? Or Is Christmas a bore and presents all a chore? Will Jesus ever come to the party? Can a homeless man ever be arty? Does the manger clip your wings? Or is it always time to wallow in seasonal sins? - M.T. Sands teases and delights with

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leopard Publishing Ventures Ltd
• Release date: Nov 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9780995708594

Sedley Proctor

Sedley was born in Poole, Dorset and grew up in West London where visits to the local library instilled in him a life-long love of books. Sedley always loved writing and English. In fact, when he was eleven, he began a historical novel, now lost to posterity, but, if memory serves, in the style of Henry Treece and Ronald Welch. At school in Winchester he started to dream about a writing career, and was even lucky enough to win a prize for a short story, the title of which he has now forgotten. For some reason, however, the final line sticks in his mind. "Was it a living or waking dream? - No, she must be dead." After a brief flirtation with archaeology, he studied English at Nottingham University where he was tutored, for a term, by the Northern Irish poet, Tom Paulin. In the 1990s, he worked in fringe theatre and was involved in productions of Macbeth and Bertolt Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities. His own play, Salt Lake Psycho about the notorious murderer, Gary Gilmore was put on at the now defunct Man in the Moon theatre in Chelsea. Salt Lake Psycho was directed by Sean Holmes, current associate artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe. For the best part of two decades, Sedley lived and worked as a teacher and translator in Southern Italy. Here he collaborated with French writer, Claude Albanese on the screenplay of Dirty Waters. Dirty Waters, which is a political thriller, written with Italian blood, English sweat and French tears, received a commendation at the 2003 Montpellier Festival. In Italy Sedley continued to experiment with his writing, devising an invented dialect for a novel about a young female brigand of the Risorgimento. He also experimented with performance poetry, accompanying local blues band, Big Daddy Lawman on their tours of Apulian taverns, churches and bars. Returning to Britain in 2013, Sedley wrote The Half Days (2015), an ex-pat adventure set in Southern Italy. He struck up a writing partnership with Tony Henderson. Together they quickly published two books: Over & Under i (2015) and Over & Under ii (2016), a series of naughty tales, inspired by the tales of the Arabian Nights. The Over & Under Series has subsequently morphed into the Naughty Stories Series. The first in this series, Ten Naughty Stories was published in 2019 under the pen name, M. T. Sands. Sedley has also published the sequel to The Half Days under the title, Accidental Death of a Terrorist. Accidental Death of a Terrorist (2019) is the second part of the Mezzogiorno Trilogy. Sedley and Tony have written a children's book, The Wolf Garden, under the alias F. M. Frites: A Totally, Completely, and Utterly Bodacious Adventure with Unicorns and Gnomes.

Book preview

Bad Santa

Ten Naughty Christmas Stories

And Some Well-Filled Stockings

M.T. Sands

M

.T. Sands spends Christmas with her boyfriend, Naim a.k.a. the Sheik. Naim does not celebrate Christmas officially, but he does enjoy the fancy dress, the Santa costumes and the strategic positioning of mistletoe. As for herself, Mary has several festive traditions which she always carries out – sometimes in secret. Every year she dresses as Santa and travels to local villages leaving random offerings on people’s doorsteps. This year, for example, she gave jars of honeycomb made from her bees, specially labelled with her North Pole logo. The Sheik will sometimes play along by dressing in an elf outfit and watching the polar express. None of this I hasten to add has been captured on camera or posted on Social Media. Her exploits have reawakened some locals’ belief in the existence of Santa, good or bad. Although, as one mother exclaimed, rather rudely, how could the real Santa give a gift quite so sticky?

Contents

Nutcracker

Bad Santa

Parable of the Waiting Room

All on My Own

The Gooseberry Fool

The Hitcher

Jesus Works For A Sunbeam

Toad’s Christmas

The Manger

Nativity

Extinction Rebellion

The Turkey that Burned

Hats Over Christmas

Stocking Fillers

The Fox Who Stole Christmas

The Christmas Squirrel

The Drunk and the Drink

Christmas Wishes

M.T. Sands Interview

Nutcracker

T

here is something about reaching the end of the year and knowing that Christmas is around the corner that leads to a maelstrom of emotional reaction. There is an overwhelming urge to ensure that the elements that are conjured from a mainly half-forgotten childhood be recreated and then the driving psychopathic urge to share it – or force it on others.

There is also an impetus to attend those ‘getting into the Christmas spirit’ events such as pantomime and the ballet.

Which are bizarre – let’s face it. One is high farce with rowdy, bawdy shouting humour and the other the complete antithesis – silence, elegant and graceful. Reflecting perhaps the two sides of Christmas. The spiritual promise of hope and the other the desperate need to celebrate in the dark in the hope that Spring will return.

Ballet, in itself, is one of the most extreme sports imaginable. They are athletes, and as with all spectator sports, we go and admire the elegance, control and the bodies of those performing. Secretly, we feel we too could do that given the training, hard work and dedication – and those are the altars we worship at the ballet.

Pantomime is the raw crude element of us given a face and a stage.

The first pantomime I ever saw was in my early twenties attending a British Embassy Christmas ball in Africa and remember the rictus of horror as the non-British guests and the locally engaged staff watched the ambassador and staff perform, shouting ‘it’s behind you’ and ‘oh no it’s not’ to the bemusement of the guests. The performers had a great time and a real sense of having purged the ‘Christmas spirit’ bug. The guests departed, having reinforced their collective view that British people cannot hold their liquor. There was no other reason they could see would enable anyone (and I mean anyone) to lose their dignity in such a manner.

So perhaps the difference between the two can be summed up in the word ‘dignity.’

Having made this important distinction, the real pleasure lies in deciding at what point during the run up to Christmas you wish to enjoy the schizophrenia of crude or dignified. You can alternate. Personally, I have always enjoyed the sport of trying to combine them so the shared laughter of the carnival spirit in the Pantomime takes you into the community spirit in an unsophisticated way while the glorious music of the ballet can sweep you away. As it does, there is pleasure in contemplating the thighs and padded mound between of the male ballet dancers. Reminding you of the pleasure of what you could do - playing nutcracker.

Dignified or not, pleasures of the flesh rule.

Indecorous and debasing.

The shuddering physical pleasure of Christmas.

Bad Santa

I

n a country village, Christmas has its own unique set of traditions. The businesses that surround the village also have theirs, none more enlivening than the office Christmas party when indiscretions are many, and certain ladies and gentlemen become too far hearty even for themselves.

Samantha Ridley considered herself a stalwart of the village, but others did not necessarily agree, regarding her as aloof and somewhat suburban in her attitude to life. People did not think she had a hidden side until she had passed the point of a few too many and insisted upon rolling her own tobacco. When she did, she usually made more friends before forgetting her Mary Jane and retreating back into her suburban shell.

Marvin Ridley, on the other hand, was a complete outsider, accepted by everyone in the village, because they felt he was a good bloke, and that was the end of it.

***

Marvin was a brick Samantha decided. In fact, he had always been a brick she finally admitted to herself.

Sometimes she found him frustrating and even a little dull, but he had this unerring habit of coming through for her just when her confidence had deserted her and she was all at sea.

He’d done it again at the office Christmas Party in early December. The Marvin she rarely saw was suddenly a season’s full of greetings, humour and chat. Her colleagues were astonished and he had made her proud.

That’s a fine figure of man you have there, declared Sybil as she returned Marvin from