Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

If not, then perhaps we should seek ourselves a more subtle form of retribution (in the form of another ‘supportive’ letter to our dear gullible ‘friend’ Mr Donovan Lefferts)?

Revenge is a dish best served cold, eh, Mr Brogan? The way turkey (or duck) is oft best enjoyed on Boxing Day, alongside a good, rich dollop of fruity pickle…

Yours etc.,

Eliot Tooth

Coombes Cottage

Lower Field

Sharp Crag Farm

Nr Burley Cross

December, 2006

Dear__COUSIN SALLY__,

Welcome — be you friend, relative, old neighbour, ex-workmate, former sexual partner or all of the above! — to this year’s bonzer Coombes Family Christmas Round-up!!!!!

Surely it can’t be a whole twelve months since I sat down to write the last one, out of my mind on prescription painkillers (after an agonizing kidney infection), utterly broke and freezing cold, huddled up in front of a malfunctioning bar-fire, from our tiny bedsit in Hull?!

Of course we were all still struggling to come to terms with Ramsay’s sudden death at that point (when you marry a partner so much older than you are, you’re naturally resigned to the prospect of losing them prematurely, but under such awful circumstances? I still — to this day — can’t pick up a steam iron without shuddering…).

Then there was the loss of Thornton Manor (our beautiful, ancient, family home), poor Hayden and Dylan were taken into temporary care (although the problem wasn’t scurvy, after all!), Jared was facing those trumped-up shoplifting charges, Madeline was still coming to terms with her recent diagnosis and little Poppy was screaming the rafters down because I’d run out of teething drops!

Definitely not the best of circumstances in which to be composing a Christmas message — so please forgive me if my spelling was dodgy (or even more dodgy than it normally is!) and my tone was slightly hyper!

There’s been a hell of a lot more water under the bridge since then (many miles on the — currently broken — speedometer of our old camper van, countless Happy Meals devoured, numerous games of Ker-plunk lost and won, endless idle — and not so idle — threats issued from irate debtors, hundreds of GREAT, GREAT ADVENTURES in other words) and I really can’t wait to tell you all about it!

We miss Hull like crazy: those long, bracing walks collecting scraps of firewood on the muddy Humber beach in the pouring rain; ‘illegal’ chocolate fondues held on the roof of my flat (so as not to wake the baby!) dressed in gloves and balaclavas with my kind ‘comrades’ from the slaughterhouse; that mouthwatering aroma of curry and chips from the rowdy Balti Hut downstairs; the Coombes Family Band, Exoskeleton, performing outside M&S (me on accordion, Madeline on fiddle, Hayden on bongos, Poppy on tambourine, Dylan passing the hat around); my brief but intensely erotic relationship with Mr Nolan, our bailiff, which, while it ended quite badly (he was just manipulating my feelings to gain full access to our home, and when he managed it he took virtually everything, including the kids’ instruments) taught me the very, very valuable lesson that one day — yes, one day — I might finally be ready to open my heart and find ‘true love’ again…

What life-affirming times they were! And things have only got better, since…

You will have seen (from the new address) that we’ve moved back to West Yorkshire. It seemed the only sensible thing to do (once the boys were released from care) since Jared was on remand in Leeds and the journey from Hull wasn’t the easiest to manage with limited resources and a large family in tow.

We initially stayed for a few weeks at a B&B in Haworth — Brontë Country! (until it was closed down by Health and Safety) — then, after a chance meeting with an incredibly charming and ‘centred’ individual called Brother Julius (a shaman with the Church of the Broken Lyre — they’re amazing!

Really screwy — really kinky! Look them up on the internet!) and his gorgeous wife, Iona (named after the windswept Scottish island), who were running a stall at a New Age Fayre selling dream catchers (exquisite ones, which Iona makes herself out of local hides and crystals), we ended up moving into a fabulous teepee, just outside Timble near the Washburn Valley.

We stayed there, rent-free (brilliant!!!), for several months and the entire family got involved in the manufacture of wire cranial massagers (a spider-like metal implement which you push on to the top of the head and it stimulates various, crucial pressure points), but unfortunately the locals weren’t too keen on the encampment (there was a problem with our sewage pit — which was located just behind their tea shop).

That, coupled with unpredictable weather (May was very wet, so much so that two of the children developed trench foot), and a terrible flash-flood (which took literally all of our remaining possessions — bar Ramsay’s mother’s favourite blue glass decanter, which I never really liked in the first place!) meant that we were obliged to move into more ‘traditional’ quarters for a spell.

After a month in an abandoned warehouse (amazing parties! — incredible acoustics!) we actually ended up getting our own little council house after Jared’s case-worker, a beautiful, passionate man called Vito (the Spanish for ‘vital’ — read into that what you will!) pulled a few strings on our behalf.

Unfortunately, much of the equipment for the manufacture of the cranial massagers had been lost in the flood (soldering irons and the like) so we initially struggled to make ends meet. Then Iona moved in with us, temporarily (along with her two daughters Pearl and Lunar — Vito had gone back to his wife by this stage), and taught me the ancient method of hair removal — ‘threading’ — which originated in India but is widespread all over the Middle East.

It’s a rather fiddly and complicated process which is strictly non-invasive and simply involves holding a piece of (clean — well, cleanish!) cotton between your two hands and your teeth, forming a tiny loop, trapping a single hair (or a line of hairs) in it, then extracting it/them with a sharp, rapid movement.

I like to think that I could have become very proficient in this amazing beauty treatment (and might easily have made an excellent living at it) if it weren’t for my two false front teeth (one or other of them kept flying out at critical moments, causing a certain amount of confusion and distress amongst my clients).

It was at around about this time that Jared’s case finally came to court (Yay!!!). We were all very apprehensive about it, but given that he’s only eighteen, and it was only his seventh offence, the judge went easy on him (double yay!!!). His closing summary was a little severe, however. He referred to Jared as ‘a persistent thief’.

Of course Iona — who was with me, offering moral support, and is very forthright by nature — said she couldn’t just sit by and allow him to say such awful things about a young man of such obviously great potential. She leapt to her feet in the public gallery: ‘Persistence is a wonderful quality in a young man,’ she shouted, ‘in an age of pikers and quitters, persistence is a virtue that we should be actively encouraging in our youth, not using it as a stick to beat them with!’

I couldn’t have put it better myself! Unfortunately Iona’s outburst ended up in us both being evicted from the building. Jared’s lawyer even went so far as to say that the sentence was made considerably harsher as a consequence (although I think he was probably just caught up in the drama of the moment — much the same as we were!).

Jared was eventually saddled with over 200 hours of community service (poor soul, and that’s on top of his lengthy period in remand!). Yet, strange to say, this cruel-seeming punishment (given that he only ‘borrowed’ the collection box in order to study the design and use it as a starting point to make me a jewellery box for my birthday) was to turn out to be the making of us!