A strange thing happened the night we broke up for Christmas. On my way home I called for a celebratory pizza and a glass or two of red followed by a couple of pints of Steelmakers Brown in the Old Engine Room. By the end of the evening I was probably a little worse for wear, but not enough to imagine seeing a very small Harrison sitting on the top of our Christmas tree.
If our doorbell had turned into a glowing representation of his face I might have expected it, and like old Ebenezer put it down to the prosciutto being off or the mozzarella having exceeded its use by date. But the fact is I had no premonition that anything unusual was about happen.
As a distant church bell chimed midnight, I slipped my key into the lock at the third attempt, shushed the door as it closed behind me and staggered quiet-ish-ly inside.
It’s clear that I wasn’t intoxicated enough to start seeing things because I even had the presence of mind not to go upstairs and risk disturbing Mrs Eddison. Instead I crept into the living room, lay down on the sofa, and watched the ceiling rotate. How many revolutions it made before I fell asleep is unclear, but the next thing I remember is seeing Harrison peering down at me from the top of our Norway spruce.
I rubbed my eyes in disbelief but he refused to disappear. Not only that, he began to speak. “You forgot something,” he said, testily, and thrust a tiny arm out. On the floor where it pointed was a small parcel that must have fallen from my coat pocket. It was inexpertly wrapped in the same festive paper we’d used to back our display of symmetrical Christmas trees.
Though the last day of term is a perfect snowstorm of stripping displays and manic tidying, I like to set aside a few minutes to present each child with a card and something glittery from Poundland. It’s also a good time for me to open my gifts from them and to make a point of letting everybody know just how much I needed some reindeer socks and a Santa fridge magnet.
But Harrison didn’t give me his gift until mid-way through the afternoon, while I was busy gathering my flock of curly paper sheep and herding them into the recycling box. “Put it on my table and I’ll open it in two minutes,” I told him.
But two minutes became two hours, and it wasn’t until all the children had gone home that I remembered it. In fact I almost binned it by mistake, along with a pile of sweet wrappers and a half-eaten mince pie. I should have opened it then but my pizza was waiting so I stuffed it into my coat pocket.
Now, at Harrison’s bidding, I remove several layers of sellotape and retrieve my prize. It is a glittery pencil topped with a snowman eraser, exactly like the one I gave him. I grin and look up to say thank you, but he’s no longer there. He’s been replaced by a cheeky little elf.
Steve Eddison writes a fortnightly column for Tes magazine. He is a teacher at Arbourthorne Community Primary School in Sheffield.
