While Shepherds Washed My Socks

by Dillie Dorian

  * * *

  We never really get up to much on Crimby, and I decided that Mum and Harry really needed a rest what with being pregnant and having a seven year old girl and two boys who behaved even younger than that as a general rule. Oh, and a spoilt brat fifteen year old who stalked off with her boyfriend the minute it became apparent that she was majorly cutting down on presents this year.

  I sort-of shepherded Kit and the boys outside, and decided to go and see Kay (and see if Kay was as deserted as she made out for Crimby).

  “By the way, I did get the rest of you prezzies!” Kay enthused, the minute I’d pointedly entered her house via the front door, to be sure to wish Eileen and Ben a merry Crimby and all that. I felt a sudden dangerous pang in my chest. Right, so that was what I hadn’t got around to yet – buying my mates’ gifts.

  “Um… I…” I creaked, nibbling my lip. Due to a mixture of indoor carolling with the family and immediate-action guilt, I couldn’t quite manage words once again.

  “Yeah, I know,” she blathered. “I’m gonna get everyone to do presents at Ben’s New Year’s Party at bLIMEy. I just wanted to give you mine today!”

  “Kay, come indoors,” yelled Eileen. “You’re letting the heat out! You don’t have to hang around the doorstep like a latchkey kid! You have no idea the trouble I’ve been through to be rich enough to keep the house warm for you!”

  “Yeah, alriiight, GRAN!” Kay bit back.

  “Don’t call me Gran, madam. I’ve been in the Hell’s Angels, and I have a tattoo to prove it.”

  “Y’don’t need a tattoo to prove you’ve been in the Hell’s Angels,” I heard Ben point out distantly from the living room. It said everything for the decibels Eileen was speaking at.

  “I’d like to see you find one who hasn’t got a tatt,” scoffed Eileen. I saw her emerge from the kitchen with a tray of Crimby cookies and disappear into the lounge to offer him one.

  “Thanks,” I heard him say, before he came into view with the warm cookie gripped between his teeth and Aimee in tow also with biscuit. “We’re going out,” he explained, pulling on his sports hoodie and dashing back into the lounge for a second. When he returned, he was lifting a camo-print scarf from a bundle of neatly unwrapped paper, as if somebody had been going to kill him for tearing or being ungrateful.

  “Here’s your presents,” said Kay, who I hadn’t realised was even gone from the hallway. “I made the paper and gift tags myself-”

  “Oh Kay, what a waste!” tutted Eileen, thrusting the cookies her way authoritarianly. “You must always use the shop-bought stuff made of recycled newspaper. It’s fifty percent more free at the corner shop, and good for the environment like you’re always stressing about. And always make sure that you use exactly three centimetres of tape for each corner, and…” Her voice drowned out as Kay dragged me upstairs. I was starting to believe that Ben must’ve spent half his life being ordered to sit tight and shut up, use exactly four sheets of toilet paper and organise cutlery at right angles.

  Only when we were safely shut into Kay’s Crimby Grotto, and I was sitting down, did I even dare look at the presents – it went without saying that even if Ben or Eileen had taken charge of the giftlets, the choice of wrapping paper would be nothing short of outrageous.

  They were all printed with teeny-tiny, carefully coloured tortoises and sealed entirely with glitter glue. It seemed that Eileen was at least right about Kay’s conscience conflict over the environment v.s. hoarding snazzy craft “waste”. I gathered that the tortoise thing had everything to do with that card from her long-distance crush.

  The gift tags were shaped like tortoises and made out of a mix of corrugated and flat card with little rhinestones in the shells. Our names were written about a hundred times each in our own special colour, following the shape of the tortoise like in the shape poem Kitty’d brought home for Halloween (something mildly adorable scrawled around the silhouette of a cat).

  “O-pen it,” said Kay, pronouncing all three syllables like a separate sentence each. (Nature/nurture debate solved finally.)

  I carefully peeled the edge of the paper, having already OCD-biker style decided to keep it all for my future children(?) to observe and rationalise what sort of maniac to avoid. Or maybe glue all the tags to the fridge.

  Right. Socks. Long, fluffy, stripy pink and tangerine socklets. Yes, I’d noticed that they were the sort of thing Kay wore everyday, most evidently any time we had Drama, and yes, of course she seemed to have her heart set on turning me into her clone. (I set my mental alarm bells for a gift of brown contact lenses and/or attempt to tan my skin while I sleep.)

  “Um, tha-”

  My voice’d stopped working entirely.

  “Ah, speechless!” She grinned. “I noticed your fam didn’t seem like the sort who gave socks at Christmas, and I noticed that your end toes are purple every time we do PE.”

  Of course, she was right. I only have about eight pairs of socks – seven of which I’ve had since they were a mini style craze just after we started Secondary; trainer socks with “Monday”, “Tuesday”, “Wednesday” etc printed on them, kinda like the bibs you see in MotherCare. The other pair could also easily be mistaken for baby booties – pale blue grippy bedsocks with a stick-on velcro Eeyore. Thanks Kay – I don’t know if these tutti frutti monsters are better or worse, but at least they don’t contain holes (the cause of Purple Toe Syndrome when combined with sleeping in a malheated attic all year round).

  “Are you going to try them on?” she asked, having noticed that I’d opted for the grippy ones (minus the Eeyores) at about two seconds’ freezing-footed notice that morning.

  I changed socks, and warm as they were, my bumbly brain was whirring through a list of exceptionally bizarre offerings that she might’ve found for the rest of my family.

  For instance, Union Jack plastic party-hat fedoras with glued-on tassels for overpatriotic Zak; or a fluffy mobile phone warmer for Charlie, to match my socks; or a shed cerise dog-fur hot water bottle cover for Mum; or maybe a Playboy Bunny blow-up chair for Aimee, like I’d seen in a catalogue of some kind.

  I grabbed one of the many spangly notebooks off the desk, turned to the very back page to avoid seeming to pry on any notes or journal entries it may have held, and wrote: Is everyone still outside? since she was nearer to the window and I was sat on the bed trying to resist the temptation to handle the remaining presents like they were timebombs or possibly as if I was playing that Frisbee game that squirts water at you at irregular intervals (whilst wearing my mum’s wedding dress and having just found out that the “bomb” is filled with acid or something).

  “Yeah,” she let me know after a glance. “And that’s great! Now I can give everyone their presents all at once – Ben’s handling Aimee right now by the way; he forbade me to interfere with her.”

  Kay got up and hared down the stairs with me following after with my combustible armful of timebombs/Frisbees/“gifts”. Zak and Charlie were bitching at each other like teenage girls, leaving Kitty to try and stop the dogs making snow-angels in mud.

  She paused at the front door. “You lot! C’min a second!” she called, in a directly similar manner to how that paedophilic witch from Hansel and Gretel would tempt my vulnerable siblings.

  “All right!” yelped Zak, excitably. “I thought we were done for presents!”

  Kay scattered the overenthusiastically nametagged packages amongst my brothers and sister, and legged it back halfway upstairs away from the cold (or because something really was about to explode).

  I followed that half of the way just in case, watching her dash up to the attic and reappear with her digital camera. “Watch, and learn.”

  She expertly filmed the three unwrapping their tortoisey presents, muttering amongst themselves.

  “You didn’t put up a good enough reaction,” she sighed. “I set up my own fun little projects sometimes. When I was eight, I dressed up as a vending machine to see who would give me money for tap water
if I labelled it ‘Sprite’. And when I was ten, I went to a barbecue in a nun costume, just to see how people reacted. That’s where your Mary costume came from, Kit!”

  Ah. I’d wondered why Kay would possess a nun costume, but had been afraid to ask in case the very question dislodged something in her mad mind.

  I hadn’t been paying attention to the actual gifts, I realised, because my eyes were on Kay and her wobbly craziness just three stairs up from me. She offered to replay the vid, but I had a good enough view of my sibs’ gifts once I actually looked:

  Charlie’s present was a pair of fluffy socks like mine. Black and purple. Right away I knew where this was going – Kay wanted to record the real, modern day reaction of people living out the socially accepted greatest fear (getting socks for Crimby), as experienced by someone, anyone, who did not live in an army-rigid household of rationed kitchen roll.

  Zak’s socks were a tidge more normal – just your run of the mill “Ay Carumba!” Bart Simpson doodahs. Kit’s were My Little Pony. Emily’d just given her a My Little Pony game for the PlayStation, which she hadn’t got use of yet (not through lack of interest; just ’cause the boys guarded their outdated games consoles like fire-breathing dragons forced to share lair and bounty).

  “You like?” she asked, finally.

  The three of them blinked at her, stunned, and quickly forced a nod.

  “Shall I put your reactions on YouTube?”

  I shook my head rapidly. Nobody in my family is allowed to put pictures of anyone on the internet. (Though Aimee’s got a MySpace, a Bebo, and a few other profiles Mum and Harry don’t know about.) We’re allowed to send stuff over email though – convenient, since between them Aimee and Zak must have about half the world (OK, the town)’s email addies by now.

  “Oh well. It’s always fun to record reactions. I might write a book about it one day. I’ve already got a dream diary, a regular diary, and of course a reaction diary – started ’em all when I was Kit’s age!”

  It was then that I resolved to work on distancing her from my little sister, who seems mad enough as it is.

  #18 Aloha! & Welcome To Limbo-Land!

  “Limbo.”

  As well as being a fantastic party game (for the more elastic of the population), it’s a word for the gap between Crimby and New Year, also known (by people who like words) as “nothingness”, “void”, “purgatory” and “oblivion”.

  I looked up “limbo” in the thesaurus, and it told me it can also mean those things, although I don’t think they meant in the same context. Whatever, I like taking words out of context.

  A sign of the onset of “limbo” in the Hartley/Robinson household is Nirvana. That was another “alternative” thesaurus word for “limbo”, but I mean the band. Music blasted nonstop until Zak forces Charlie to eat his Nevermind tape and shoves some rap on. Which is a dreadful contrast.

  Of all the things that went on between Crimby and New Year, the strangest were:

  1) Andy’s late Crimby present for Charlie. Andy’d spent Crimby Day in Bournemouth with his gran, dad and adopted brother. He popped over for a few minutes on Boxing Day ’cause Charlie’d sent him a text about his new socks – and being insanely insane for a GP’s son, and, well, a boy, that meant deciding to come round and see them, as well as to give Charlie his late Crimby prezzie.

  It was a bra. Taking the “Omigod Charlie’s a girl! Just because he chooses to have longer hair than average and his can also be a female name!” joke about a mile and a half too far. Especially now, since Andy’s greasy strawberry blonde hair’s nearly at his shoulders, and there was that girl from The Suitcase Kid who shared his nickname…

  Especially now, because it was my bra. The one that went AWOL back in September. I don’t even want to think about the implications. Charlie knew I wouldn’t want it back – he snipped off part of the strap and has started wearing at as another wristband. He’s sewed (yes, you read that right) the words “Malice In Blunderland” into it, despite that he’d likely get ejected from any and all of their gigs for being under fourteen and Charlie, so I at least suppose it’s kind of nice to live with an optimist.

  2) Aimee’s very wet photo being circulated around every student at her and our school. (This, I happened to find out from my own mates yesterday.) That was down to Ben having the addies of virtually the whole sixth form after having organised and DJ’d the Year 12 and 13 end of term disco. Most of the people on that list had younger friends and rellies and generally knew people who found pictures of celebs without makeup hilarious and naturally wanted everyone to see the most popular girl in Year 11 after a squirt to the face.

  Ben wasn’t in charge of that though; he’d been shocked to find out. It was Kay who’d got curious and opened an email sent by Charlie to Ben on our shared account with Aimee. Kay had assumed that it was Zak who sent it, and that he was already circulating it, so she “helped him out” and zipped it round the guest list that Ben had kept ready for inviting virtually the same crowd to his bLIMEy New Year’s Party.

  But of course it hadn’t been Zak. Because, in his own words: “Blood’s thicker than water, and since I’m not totally heartless and me and Aims are having a little brother or sister together, custard’s thicker than blood. So I figured that whatever runs through her veins might make me seem a bit too much of a git to be worthy of that Nintendo Wii that’s at her dad’s disposal. And believe me, that’s the only reason!”

  3) The Xbox has blown up because Zak got all obsessed with whatever kill-’em-all baddie-punting title he’d used his waiting voucher on. Since it was secondhand anyway, it’d been looking like bye-bye games console for Zak, but miraculously it made him more eligible to get his Wii, since Harry knew the game shop guy from way-back-in-the-day college and he took pity on him for not having a console at his easily damaged age. (Harry, being a salesperson, knew not to point out that we still had a perfectly working-ish GameCube and PS2.) So the game shop guy jumped us up the waiting list, and now it’s looking like Zak will have his Wii by March at the latest, instead of November where the list ended (for now).

  Zak is jumping for joy all over the living room, with the doglets joining in his merriment and barking/weeing with excitement that they might be able to fry their few braincells left lying next to a whole new console pretty darn soon.

  That’s just life in our house.

  P.S. Several texts, and everybody (my mates that is) was aware of their invite to Ben’s New Year’s Party. The e-vitations were meant to be sent out this week, but most people our age (OK, just Keish and Chantalle) would be irked at having anything less than a month to plan an outfit to wear in a badly-lit café at five mins to midnight, waiting for a kiss.

  P.P.S. I eventually got my voice back. That was (apparently) good news, ’cause the entire family was in a tizzy about me not being able to join in singing carols properly, so they were grinmakingly pleased to find that I’d be fine for the goofy chorus of “Happy Birthday Dear Za-ak!” as he celebrates having been double figures for a whole year. (Wow –or woe, depending on how you see it– our kid brother is growing up, etc.) If I was any one of my friends, I’d be optimistically relieved that I wasn’t about to transfer some contagious disease to whoever I snog on New Year – but being me, I’m just pleased that I’m not as ill as Fern had been.

  P.P.P.S. Kitty never did find out that the lucky bag and stickers were from me. I got my satisfaction in ribbing Kay in private about how the expensive “better” gift (a £30 rainbow light projector, seriously) had barely got a look-in where my odd little sister was concerned.

  P.P.P.P.S. (That’s a lot of pees.) We called today to wish your dad a happy birthday – I don’t know if he mentioned it. It’s OK that you were out… I hadn’t been hoping for a quick “hi” after all this time or anything. Hope he had a lovely day.

  T.T.F.N. Harley & Co – (“Co” stands for “crazy lil brother still stomping all over the squeaky sofa, wielding the Sky remote and wishing he had that Wii” –
bless him for still having that childlike imagination! This is better than the Gameboy he made out of Lego).

  The next book in the recommended reading order is: Sitting Down Star Jumps

  Connect With Me Online:

  Website:

  https://www.dilliedorian.co.uk

  Personal Blog:

  https://muzzyheadedme.tumblr.com

  Facebook:

  https://facebook.com/dilliedorianofficial

  About The Author:

  Dillie Dorian is an English author of child and YA realistic fiction. She is notable for offering all fourteen titles in her debut series, A Bended Family, for free online.

  Dillie has been “writing” since a very young age, and her mother probably still hoards innumerable sellotape-bound “sequels” to everything from Animal Ark to The Worst Witch.

  Her first serious project began in September 2006, with “Oops! Did I Forget I Don’t Know You?”, which sparked countless official sequels of its own within months. Working on this series between the ages of thirteen and fourteen taught her everything she knows about writing, and she hasn’t stopped expanding on the Hartleys’ lives since!