My report of Christmas day at the Velvet Marmoset has been delayed. It has been quite some days since this occurred, indeed a whole year has even bid us farewell. It has taken me some time to process the events, I am of course quite quite well but…well…perhaps I should just recount the events first, then you might understand my prolonged reverie. 

I had been experiencing high hopes that it was in fact going to be a bit of a corker this year. Christmas can be unpredictable as we all know but there is something of a comfort in the traditions that some of us seem to plough through. It is as if we can say, yes, the world is going to hell in a hand cart in many ways but we will at least have a familiar day of knowing we are overeating similar food offerings, indulging in mild family fracas and wondering what day it actually is. 

We heard the festive hooter hooting as Nelson pulled up in his chauffeur driven charabanc  and we were unsurprised to see that he was already half way down a bottle of his festive home brew. He had made an effort and was sporting his best bow tie and optimistically had suspended a sprig of mistletoe from his tail (still delightfully free of buttock toupee).

Christmas at the Velvet Marmoset was promised to be a grand affair, so I had dug out and dusted down my prized Wang. Hector had poured his lithe limbs into his gold lycra leotard, very much influenced by the great Mr Mercury. Not wanting to be unnecessarily salacious or erotically obvious on a family day, he decided not to go with the feather boa, instead preferring to drape a sensible woollen scarf around his shoulders – shoulders may I add, which were heavily adorned with glitter body butter. I presumed the scarf was for some sensible added warming effect later on in the evening as the air was beginning to chill.

The mad muppet had decided to tone it down somewhat this year. She recently went to a Discworld themed party and suffered quite deep lacerations after her wizard’s sleeve got caught in the Kenwood Chef. Ever since then, any outfit that is being mixed with alcohol has no dangling flappy bits. Therefore she wore her tweed all in one catsuit with a sensible shoulder length cape. At her age she really shouldn’t, but not everyone can aspire to be a sartorial sensation such as myself or Hector. 

I must confess that nothing out of the ordinary happened until later on that day. We had all enjoyed a splendid feast and then had succumbed to the turkey induced coma, happily slumping in winged back chairs, in the newly furnished lounging chamber. This was newly decorated after the fireball incident, as described in the tale entitled ‘Nelson and the Flaming Hoop of Destiny’. 

The sherry magically appeared and we all began to enjoy a quiet and dignified post dinner drink, toasting Mr Cohen and Mr Bowie, as we went. This was followed up by a cheeky champagne chaser and then someone found the bottle of something that Sister Josephine has brewed in her vegetable shed. It was about 50% proof and contained, amongst other things, her prize winning parsnips. Some time passed. Drinks were drunk. We were drunk.

Giggling to ourselves, Nelson and I giddily traversed the room in search of a tasty morsel to help soak up the booze. We were strangely unstable on our trotters, so we linked paws and off we went. En route to the stuffing balls, I stubbed my paw and ended up tottering sideways, gathering speed, trailing Nelson behind me like a large hairy satellite. Gravity prevailed and we crashed through the pantry door, landing in an inelegant horizontal heap. 

I hazily looked up to see various tinned goods and glass bottles springing off the shelves, one I focussed on read ‘vitamins for the disenfranchised’, and it was then that things began to slide sideways in my memory…

The door was flung open by Hector, to find…well myself and Nelson…er…well…we had marginally transcended the boundary of ‘just good friends’ via the means of a gentle, shy peck on the cheek. Nelson was the pecker, I was the peckee, and the cheek was the one attached to my face. My handbag was initially twitching with the urge to hit him and protect my good name…but much to my surprise, I dropped it on the floor and tried to understand the warm and happy feeling I was experiencing. To make matters worse, or better, Nelson seemed as thunderstruck as I was. We both sat together on the floor, quietly thinking about what had just happened. However, our moment of contemplation was shattered fairly quickly. 

Hector, himself feeling the need for a scooby snack, had also skulked to the kitchen, had heard the almighty din and had come to investigate.  He stood, door handle in hand, staring at us open mouthed…we kicked the door back shut in his face so we could continue our thinking in private. 

Nelson was ever the gentleman hound and patted me on the shoulder, telling me that he was as surprised as me as to this act of sudden affection and was similarly perplexed – and happy.

This was going to take some contemplation. The problem with that, to perform some well thought out reflection, we still had to get out of the larder. The emergence of shame. We waited a good while until it fell quiet and then tentatively opened the door. We were met with the gaze of everyone present at The Marmoset, peering at us with great interest. They had found snacks, had formed a semi circle of chairs and were waiting to see what happened next. 

So I leave you dear reader with this report of a most unexpected occurrence. I need to consider things as I am not distressed, which would have been my first expected reaction. Instead, well I feel as though I have just found the one thing I have always been searching for, even though I wasn’t aware I had lost it in the first place.  I need a sherry. I need to think…