A ruined Christmas eve (continuous writing)

“No thanks. We are on duty,” the fireman added, “Sorry about flooding your house in this festive season.”

Miss Prothero miaowed, “Don’t worry. It is just a tiny bit of mess,” curling her fingers in her hair. Staring at the remaining decorations peeling off from the wall, I thought, What? A BIT OF MESS! The firemen wound the hoses back into the fire engine. One of them frowned at the darkish water on the kitchen floor and sloppy decorations covered with grit and grime, looking apologetic for the mess.   

With my jaw dropped, I was gazing at the kitchen which smelled of burned toast. Water engulfed the whole kitchen and the wet walls turned light brown. The furniture was bobbing about. Plates were shattered. The table legs were crooked with cracks. Dampness in the air mixed with dust and smoke. Water was sloshing down from cupboards into the corridor, like a mini tsunami. Water passed freely in between my fingers while I was wading through the water, chattering my teeth. We had a great deal of cleaning up to do. This was just unbelievable!

The Christmas Eve turned to a disaster but Miss Prothero was joyfully chatting with the fireman. Fuming with rage, I stomped to Miss Prothero. Looking at my downturned mouth, Miss Prothero knew that she was going to have a loooooooong day. She gulped…

 Extract from A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Tomas

It was on the afternoon of the day of Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs Prothero's garden,

waiting for cats,with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas;

December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there are no reindeers. But there were

cats.

Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek

and long as jaguars and terrible-whiskered, spiting and snarling they would slink and slide

over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and l, fur-capped and

moccasined trappers, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise

cats never appeared. We were Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the

eternal snows-eternal, ever since Wednesday. We were so still that we never heard Mrs

Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was,

to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbour's Polar Cat.

Soon the voice grew louder. 'Fire!' cried Mrs Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong. And we

ran down the garden, with the snowballs in or arms, towards the house, and smoke, indeed,

was pouring out of the dining room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs Prothero was

announcing ruin like a town-crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales

standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped

at the open door of the smoke-filled room. Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face; but

he was standing in the middle of the room, saying 'A fine Christmas!' and snacking at the

smoke with a slipper.

'Call the fire-brigade, cried Mrs Prothero as she beat the gong

'They won't be there,' said Mr Prothero, "it's Christmas.'

There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr Prothero standing in the middle

of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.

'Do something,' he said.

And we threw our snowballs into the smoke-I think we missed Mr Prothero-and ran out of

the house to the telephone box.

Let's call the police as well, Jim said

'And the ambulance.

'And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires!'

But we only called the fire-brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in

helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr Prothero got out just in time before they

turned it on. Miss Prothero, ,Jim's aunt, came downstairs and peered in at them. .Jim and I

waited to hear what she would say. She always said the right thing. She looked at the three

tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving

snowballs, and she said: 'Would you like something to read?'