Once More With Footnotes

wrong. They achieve impo s sible things because no one has told them they can't be done.
     
                  Diggers and Wings followed shortly, and completed the trilogy, and by then I was in charge. But the first book was written entirely for the kid on the moving stairs.
     
                  (There are different kid s of fantasies, of course. Six years ago a Russian translator told me how hard it would be to translate the book. I said: surely Russian children don't find it too hard to believe in little people? She said: that's not the problem. The problem is making t h em believe in a store stuffed with merchandise.)
     
                  Cosgrove-Hall did a magnificent stop-motion animation for TV in the early '90s and now, with any luck, it's going to be a full movie feature from Dreamworks. I know some schools have staged it (there's not hing a drama teacher likes more than a script which has parts for everyone in the class). And now it's gone professional, to my amazement and delight. I like the stage. The special effects are better.
     
                  Break lots of legs, everyone.
     

I remember reading lo ng ago that the vision of a "typical" English Christmas owed a lot to the fact that, in his boyhood, Charles Dickens lived through seven of the worst Christmases of the 19 th Century — and so they became, under his influential pen, what Christmas "ought" to b e.
     
    As a former journalist, I think that's far too good a story to check.
     
    This was written for the magazine Time Out for Christmas, 1987. I wanted to write a kind of Victorian horror story in which the covers of a row of Christmas Cards come to life. And what better starting point than the jolly mail coach which is so, so, traditional on the really cheap cards ... and what would the passengers think of Christmas cards to come?
     
    We don't see Snoopy cards much now. But there are plenty that are worse.
     
     
     
     
     
     
T wenty P ence with E nvelope and S easonal G reeting
     
    From the Bath and Wiltshire Herald, December 24,1843:
     
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                  "CALNE — A Singular Mystery surrounds the disappearance of the London Mail Coach on Tues. last in a snowstorm of considerable magnitude, the like of which has not been seen in the memory of the oldest now living. It is thought that the coachman, missing his way in the driving blizzard at Silbury, took the horses off the road, perhaps to seek the shelter of a Hedge or Rick, and became overwhelmed in the drifting. Search parties have been sent out and the coachman, who was found wandering in a state of severe anxiety in the snow, has been brought back to Bath ..."
     
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    From the journal of Thos. Lunn, Doctor, of Chippenham, Wilts:
     
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                  The world is but a tissue spread over the depths of Chaos. That which we call sanity is but a circle of fireligh t , and when 1 spoke to that poor mazed man downstairs he was several logs short of a full blaze.
     
                  Even now, with my own more Natural fire drawn up and the study curtains shut against the Christmas chill, I shudder at the visions he imparted. Were it not for the solid evidence, which I have before me as I write, and which catches the firelight and sparkles so prettily, I could dismiss it as the mere ravings of a d e ranged mind. We have made him as comfortable as the ropes allow in my front room, but his cries punctuate this Christmas Eve like skulls in a flowerbed.
     
     
    "Is Father Christmas Coming/Or Is He Just Breathing Heavily?
    Lots of Stuffing This Christmas!!! Snug glebottom Ex Ex Ex!"
     
     
                  There is a sound outside. Carol singers! Do they not realize the terrible, terrible risk? Yet if I were to throw open the window and warn them to quit the streets, how could I answer their most obvious question? For if I attempted t o, I too would be thought mad also ... But I must set down what he told me, in his moments of clear thought, before insanity claimed him for its own.
     
                  Let my readers make of them what they may.
     
                  His eyes were the eyes of a man who had looked into Hell an d had left behind something of himself. At times he was perfectly lucid, and complained about the ropes the searcher had put him in for fear that in his ravings he would hurt himself. At other times he tried to beat his head on the wall and