In an old grey house on the East coast of Ireland five people are sittling round a fire in the big room overlooking the moonlit sea. They are Walt and Madeleine Willis, James and Peggy White and George Charters, and they are waiting for you to join them for your usual Christmas Evesdropping.
They have also been waiting for Bob Shaw, author and journalist, and his glamourous wife Sadie, whose two-tone Triumph is even now vrooming up the driveway.
Knocking perfunctorily on the window, Bob follows Sadie into the hall of Strathclyde and takes off his green eyeshade, stringback gloves, and sheepskin jacket. Meanwhile in the living room....
GEORGE: What was that funny noise at your window, Walt? It sounded for all the world like a knock. I haven't heard one of these since you last ran out of correcting fluid.
PEGGY: Maybe it was Bob's new car knocking out.
WALT: No, I've a shameful admission to make. My corflu is all dried up.
GEORGE: Is it true that Boyd Raeburn or some other Canadian millionaire is making a take-over bid for Hyphen?
WALT: Well at least one of my assets is solid. But you'd better ask his Star Reporter . . . Hi, Bob. What kept you?
GEORGE: Ah, the budding author.
JAMES: Hi, bud. You're blooming late, aren't you? Something wrong with the car?
BOB: No, these Triumphs were built to last, like the Pyramids.
GEORGE: You mean The Pyramids were originally enamalled in two colours and chromium plated? They must have been quite a sight, buzzing up and down the desert.
WALT: What did they use for fuel -- Cairosene?
BOB: They must have used water from the river. I know because of something I found in the toolkit.
GEORGE: I know I'll be sorry I asked this, but what was it you found in that toolkit?
BOB: A Nile Phial.
GEORGE: Oh, god. The mother that reared him would drown nothing.
JAMES: Oh well, back to the late late Shaw. What did keep you then?
WALT: Wait a minute James, I don't think we've detonated all the unexploded bombs in this conversation. He couldn't have known we'd ask about petrol for the pyramids. I'll bet he was going to say his car was a Triumph Herod.
BOB: No, Walt, nice try but wrong dynasty. Actually I'm a Two-Tone-Car-Man.
WALT: Weakly: Pharaoh enough. Well press on.
BOB: Something funny didn't happen today; that's what kept me late. No news came into the paper at all. No wars, no strikes, no natural calamities. Nothing at all happened in the world for 24 hours.
MADELEINE: But how did that keep you late?
BOB: You underestimate the Press. The Editor said it was the biggest sensation since the Millennium didn't arrive in 1000 AD and we brought out a special edition.
MADELEINE: But what was in it?
BOB: Well we had this banner headline HISTORY TAKES A HOLIDAY, and interviews with experts and features about all the events which had been expected to happen and didn't. It was a pity it was on the streets before we found it was just that the tape machine had broken down.
WALT: Oh well it must have been a more cheerful paper than usual. Sometimes I think you people print the wrong kind of news.
BOB: You mean I should have fallen for that fake handout you gave me last April about the official campaign to ostracise homosexuals? "Her Majesty will cut the first sod", indeed.
WALT: No, like that little item about the twon in Sweden, or as we say, town, where the authorities wanted to put down all the stray cats. They told people to identify their own cats with a red ribbon round their necks, but then the Exterminator came he found all the cats had red ribbons. The children had taken care of the strays. Now if they had killed them they'd have made the front page.
BOB: I see your point, but my Editor wouldn't regard it as much of a scoop if I wrote MAN PATS DOG.
WALT: Well we could do it in fandom, a goodnewszine for Christmas with all the news we should have been writing in letters. Like your new job and new car and your sales to Analog and your contract for a novel. And James's new job and his Watch Below going into its second edition. And Ian & Olivia's second baby. And for the main feature your famous account of How Arthur Thomson Got His Job as Production Manager.
MADELEINE: And we could have a gossip column, spreading rumurs about how the Grennells and Busbys and Willises were not splitting up.
BOB: Don't you think that sort of thing might lack piquancy?
WALT: Well, we could have memoirs by some of the glamorous and seductive women who have tried to lure us away, with descriptions of the depraved orgies we had nobly refused to attend.
MADELEINE: And we could have a column of tributes to some of the nice people who are still happily with us, like Forry Ackerman.
WALT: And, for last minute news----
IRISH FANDOM STILL TOGETHER
AFTER 19 YEARS!
WISHES ALL ITS FRIENDS
A HAPPY CHRISTMAS
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Published December 1996 by Walt & Madeleine Willis, 32 Warren Rd., Donaghadee.
A MROCCM Publicatiion
(data entry by Melanie Herz)