Free North Pole Reform School by Jaimie Admans Page B

have to deliver in December wreak havoc on my
back.”
    “That’s not the only reason you’re here, Joe. In fact, we’d
already selected you as a potential reform candidate this year before we even
noticed your behaviour in your job.”
    “Why?” Joe asks. “I haven’t done anything. I don’t go around
smashing up decorations or setting trees on fire.”
    “It’s different for you actually,” Navidad says. “It’s not
so much about any one incident as it is about a culmination of years of
thoughtlessness. Perhaps you could tell us what you do over the festive
season?”
    “Since my wife divorced me, I go and visit my brother. I
don’t intend to stay but I usually end up getting too drunk to drive home, and
have you tried getting a cab on Christmas Day? Bloody impossible, so I end up
staying with him and his family. It’s only out of pity though—they don’t want
me there, none of them do, but my brother feels guilty that he’s all happy families
with his wife and kids while his brother is all alone in a grotty flat as he
calls it. Posh bugger, he is. He invites me for Christmas dinner out of pity,
even though I don’t need it, I’d be much happier to stay in my flat and drink
my way through Christmas, but then I feel guilty for letting him down. It’s a
vicious circle.”
    “And what do you do when you’re there, Joe?”
    “Well, I make myself at home. They’ve got a big fancy TV, so
I watch the sports channel with a beer on the couch. Their couch is much comfier
than mine, so it’s only fair that I make the most of it.”
    “And you drink?”
    “Well, it would be rude not to. He’s spent so much money on
food and booze that it would be a shame to let it go to waste, so I do my best
to drink it all. Only to help him out, you see.”
    “And do you buy presents for the family?”
    “Of course I do. What do you think I am, some kind of
selfish loser?”
    “What do you buy for them, Joe?”
    “I’m thinking of stopping actually. Ungrateful buggers, the
lot of them. Last year I got my niece this lovely big doll thing, Barbie I
think it was, and she just looked at me like I was an imbecile. And my nephew,
I got him a train set, the kind my brother and I had when we were kids, and he
turned his nose up and said, ‘gee thanks, that will come in handy.’”
    “Why don’t you tell everyone how old your niece and nephew
are, Joe?”
    “God, I don’t know. The boy is probably the same age as Elf
Boy over there—yes, he’s just started college I think, and the girl is, I
dunno, twenty-something maybe.”
    I can’t help but laugh. No wonder they weren’t very
impressed with their presents.
    “And what did you buy for your brother’s wife?”
    “Last year I got her a voucher for a makeover—God knows she
needs all the help she can get—and I got my brother a big bottle of scotch. He
doesn’t like scotch, but I didn’t mind helping him drink it. I don’t like to go
there empty-handed, I know better than that.”
    “Tell us more about what you do when you’re there, Joe?”
    “Where is this going? Are you trying to tell me I ruin their
Christmas by being there?”
    “It’s not by being there, Joe. It’s by being completely
thoughtless and selfish in your actions.”
    “I’m not thoughtless or selfish at all. I just like to wind
them up a bit. The niece is way too uptight and impossible to have a joke with.
I try to make light of her boobs, but she’s just so bloody sensitive. One year
she even told her dad I was sexually harassing her, and all I’d said was that
she might like to tighten her bra before she gave herself a backache. Even
offered to tighten it for her, just to help out like, being the gentleman I
am.”
    This time it’s Luke who bursts out laughing. “So just to
reiterate, you go to their house, install yourself on the sofa with the sports
on, get drunk, harass your niece and nephew with inappropriate comments, and
buy them gifts that are either really for you or