After 11 years of Oblique House Christmas Cards you must know your way there by heart, so we've time to pause for a look at Belfast as it is on this December evening of the dying year 1960. The low grey city spreads out from the estuary of the River Lagan, like Cobbett's London, poured out over the land as if someone had forgotten to say "Wen", until it laps at green hills and blue mountains. On the slopes of Divis Mountain Peggy White prepares to dish out a diabetic dinner, and in the Parliament House in the Holywood Hills across the city Walt Willis drafts another abstruse Regulation before hurrying home; while 12 miles along the coast George Charters of Bangor, one of the Night People, bolts his breakfast and brings out his bicycle. But even in the smog of Belfast itself, the constituents of which Ian McAuley is even now measuring in the University Laboratory, we can still see burning the few hard gem-like flames of other fannish spirits. Spirit lamps, you might say, like svelte, soignee Sadie Shaw sedulosuly selling stilletto shoes, her husband huxtering Harland helicopters, Sgt. Berry brushing up his Bertillon and James White cajoling a Co. customer into a cut price coat, while his extrabrain alternates between his newest novelette and that diabetic dinner.
Within two hours all of these good people will be at Oblique House, where Madeleine Willis is now getting tea ready for Ian and Walt...
Walt wedges his Vespa into the washhouse, reflecting it is just as well the kickstarter fell off when it did, and making way for Ian's car. Ian neatly manoeuvres his fake-fawn Ford into the narrow yard (it's one of those Androit Barges) and part the scullery door, just in time to intercept a bowlful of discarded lettuce leaves on their way to the garbage can.
IAN. (wiping wet lettuce leaves off his face): You might at least have shouted "Fore"!
MAD: That would only be for mashied potatoes.
WALT: (emerging from the washhouse): What a disgusting exhibition of greed! Can't you even wait till you're in the house before you get stuck into the lettuce?
MAD: Sorry, Ian, I meant it for the garbage can.
WALT: (eyeing Ian's car): A natural mistake.
IAN: (with as much quiet dignity as is possible to one covered in wet lettuce): That is an insult which can only be wiped out in Scrabble and take off that crash helmet -- you look like an overgrown snail. Come to think of it though, that's appropriate enough for that wreck of a bike of yours.
WALT: I can't wait to hit you with a seven-letter word.
The game, No. 95 in the 1960 League is drawing to a hard fought close when Peggy and James arrive.
IAN: Utelcet? Celtute? Cuttlec... one who is cuttled? Excuse me a minute, Peggy, I've got something on my mind.
JAMES: Yes, I can see it from here -- a green crinkly thing, Is that your brain showing through? Don't tell me you're losing your skin now?
IAN: Oh it must be a piece of left-over lettuce loaf. LETTUCE! That's it. Seven letters and I'm out.
WALT: He's even taking the stuff externally now, James.
MAD: I must say I like a man with a fine head of lettuce.
Enter Sadie and Bob: What's Ian doing with that little green crown -- he looks like an Eastern potentate.
JAMES: Mongolian, anyway.
WALT: May I present His Highness, the Khan of Garbarge.
IAN: What reminds me, James, any word of that story you sent to the States?
Enter George: I told you, you should have spilt some Chanel No. 5 on it and sent it to F&SF.
IAN: One scent for 30000 words isn't enough.
GEORGE: But it might turn out to be a best smeller.
CAROL: There's a man at the door. He looks like a brush salesman but he sounds like he was collecting for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Catfish.
Enter JOHN: Hello. I got an anonymous letter from Arthur that there was fanac going on in this house.
WALT: Welcome, John . . . we haven't seen you here since Andy & Ian were discussing rates of adiabetic expansion.
JOHN: Well you see, I was going to write it up for RET, the Plain Man's Hyphen, but I haven't been able to decipher my notes.
WALT: No wonder, with one of them eating chocolate in a hair mattress and the other talking through layers of lettuce.
IAN: Say what you will, it is due to lettuce that I leap out of bed every morning with unbounded energy.
BOB: If my bed was full of lettuce, I'd do that as well.
WALT: Well, before this Christmas Card gets full of lettuce too, let's wish all our friends, from Forry to Nikki, the happiest of Christmases!
ALL: Merry Christmas!
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Published at 170 Upper N'ards Rd., Belfast 4, N. Ireland on behalf of
the MROCCM (More Reading on Christmas Cards Movement.)
(data entry by Melanie Herz)