Fair dos, the gaffer’s got a sense of humour.
‘Gabriel mate. Got a job for you down Bethlehem way,’ he says. ‘Fancy dress.’
‘What’s the theme?’
‘Well, there’s gonna be a shepherd or two, some wise guys, some animals. I thought you could wear your comedy wings. No-one would bat an eyelid. Just the basic though. Don’t give them no speeches. Turn up, flap your wings a bit, job done.’
So I put on the wings. A bit moth-eaten, and I’ve seen a few dinners since the last time I could really pull off a loop-the-loop in them, but the partygoers will probably be too drunk to notice. So I express this hope to the boss. He tells me the party is dry. There’s even going to be a baby there. So I’m not to arrive with a six pack, acting all lairy. Shame – me and the shepherds had a good session drinking under the stars the other night. I wonder if these ones are the same guys? It’s probably all part of that lost sheep scam.
Now it’s known in certain private circles that the boss has a theory about lost sheep. Reckons that one lost sheep returning to the flock might be more valuable than a whole bunch of them that never leave. So the scam in the hills is this: Shepherd A drives his flock over the hill and parks them with Shepherd B. He then finds an excuse to leave his flock and wander down to the town. Lately these shepherds have been claiming that they’ve seen a star in the east, and it’s some kind of portent. Corny, but the old ones are sometimes the best. So they go down to town, have a night out around the bars while they’re there. Next day they come back, report the sheep are lost, then trot round to Shepherd B to bring them back. Hey presto, Shepherd A’s flock is now worth ten times as much. Usually 50% of the profit goes direct to the farmer, then Shepherd A splits the remainder 60:40 with Shepherd B. Needless to say there are a lot of lost sheep in this neck of the woods now.
The boss seems to be aware of this. He’s always said, if he ever has a son, he’ll make him a farmer. He has a particularly shifty look about him today. Something tells me he has a stake in this open air gig down in Nazareth, as well.
I pitch up a bit short on my way down, meaning to land just beyond the manger where it’s nice and flat and there are no cross winds. Instead I go through the roof. Ruffles a few of my feathers, that does, and no mistake. A young guy with watery eyes and a bum-fluff beard looks at me like I just broke wind.
‘Are you here for, erm...’ he says. The wishy-washy type. His bird is lying down in the manger, in a state of partial undress, and there are all these animals about. Aye aye, I think. Pretty liberated. Then I see something moving, and hear something wailing, and it all makes sense. They’ve only gone and spawned a sprog, haven’t they. A home birth. Obviously they couldn’t make it to Bethlehem General.
I walk over to the baby. I’m not sure what I’m meant to say. Do I call it he, she, or it? And it’s a familiar-looking thing. Come to think of it, it looks like the boss. I’m thinking the old man’s not been spilling his seed on the stony ground. Crafty sod.
The baby shoots out a finger at me.
‘Alright, big man?’ I say.
‘Waaaaah,’ it says.
I flap my wings a bit, and my work here is done. This isn’t my scene. A geezer pitches up next to me in some kind of a crown and bearing all kinds of bling in his hands to offer the baby.
‘You’re not giving him that, are you?’ I say. ‘It’d be quite happy just playing with the wrapping paper you know.’
Well, he goes and gives me such a look for that. So I turn round and see who else I can find. I recognise one of the shepherds. We nod at each other. He gestures an imaginary pint. Good plan. I nod again, and we head down the road.
