Merry Christmas To All My Readers

‘Twas the night before Christmas,
and after the movie,
not a creature was stirring,
except Captain Doobie.

Goodtime Slim had long gone to bed,
With visions of sugarplums lodged in his head,
Or something otherwise suitably twee,
That kept him asleep at a quarter to three.

But the good Captain stood in anticipation,
Waiting for Santa to stop at the station,
Marked ‘Doobie and Slim’, that he’d put up on the roof,
Whilst spreading the araldite to trap every hoof.

But after a while Santa didn’t appear,
Captain Doobie doubted he’d ever get here,
Then just as his head it started to nod,
There came from the roof, “You stupid old sod!”

With a gasp Captain Doobie rushed out to the rope,
(that had led to the roof since their brush with the Pope),
straight up to the roof he struggled to climb,
and when he got there, what should he find?

There was Dasher and Dancer, Donner and Blitzen,
And Santa himself, who got quite the shits when,
He spied Captain Doobie climbing over the gutter,
So he started shouting and yelling and being a nutter,

“I should have bloody well known it was you!”
he cried, “when the reindeers landed in all of this glue!
Then one of the reindeers started to yell,
“Don’t tear strips off of him, it’s your fault as well!”

“Who’s the smart bastard who decided to stay,
For an hour and a half at that beachhouse in L.A.?
Don’t stand there and blame it all on some slacker,
When you’ve been off chasing little miss Christmas Cracker!”

Well old Santa blushed crimson right down to his beard,
Then sighing he mumbled, “it’s just as I feared,
I suppose it’s my own fault for planting the seed,
But you’re well out of order, this is mutiny, Queeg!”

But then Captain Doobie excused his involvement,
And pulled out a tin of industrial solvent,
And got down to work to unstick the hoofs,
Hearing several muttered “Wanker”s and a couple of “Poof”s.

When he was done he went over to Santa,
And said, “Well, they’re free, now they can gallop and canter.”
But the merry old fellow just shook his grey head,
“It’s no bloody good now, we’ve lost it,” he said.

Naturally Captain Doobie asked him why,
And when he told him there came a gleam in his eye,
And he dashed off downstairs to look in the cupboard,
While Santa and Co stood and recovered.

When he returned Santa looked a bit glum,
But the Captain smiled and whispered, “Don’t worry, chum,
I’ve got something here that will do just the trick,
You’ll finish the job off particularly quick.”

And with that he walked behind every reindeer,
Who nervously shouted and whinneyed in fear,
Then Santa jumped on his sleigh and flew off like a rocket,
And Captain Doobie slipped something back into his pocket.

The very next morning, ‘midst Coco-pops and Milo,
As Goodtime Slim was admiring his new Christmas biro,
They saw on The Advertiser the heartwarming sight,
Of Santa (with reindeer) photographed in full flight.

“It says here that Santa was very late on his round,”
read Goodtime Slim as he shovelled his cereal down,
“And they say he might even have not made it through,
except for the last hour when he really flew.”

Goodtime Slim wondered aloud, “but how could it be,
When reindeers already fly magically,
How could anything possibly hurry them up?”
But Captain Doobie simply kept his mouth shut.

For it was a secret known only to him, you see,
(and some in the greyhound racing industry),
but as he looks across the room we know what he sees,
the jar on the mantle, half full of chillis.