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The Adventures of Giles Tommly-Horton, Volume 3, Saving Christmas

The Adventures of Giles Tommly-Horton
Volume Three
Saving Christmas
No.1 Berkeley Square, London, W1, England, December 24, 2021

Being rudely interrupted from my favourite re-run episode of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot by a loud bang and a burst of flame, I hastened outside to witness a pall of thick black smoke bellowing from my chimney.

Looking down at myself I ponder that whilst my apparel may be called a smoking jacket, it is in fact smoking and covered in soot. ‘This isn’t cricket’ I say to myself. A fire in the chimney is not where I want the fire. I wander back into the house to contemplate a solution to the sooty situation only to be further distracted by the diminutive Belgian detective disappearing from my screen to be replaced by an urgent newsflash.

“This is the BBC News, with me Julie Etchingham, and we are bringing you some urgent breaking news.”

Slightly squew-eyed, I gulp down the remains of my special occasion Christmas Eve Barbadillo Versos 1891 sherry and turn the volume up.

“We are going over to a live press conference in Paris at the Interpol headquarters, with Françoise Boquerón European lead investigator.”

Standing in front of the world’s press, with cameras flashing, Françoise nervously begins to speak, sounding exactly like Inspector Jack Clouseau from the French Gendarme.

“First, we are urging the public to stay calm. At 16:00 this afternoon, the evil Klaus Squabb, head of the World Ecommunist Forum, made a daring escape from the Posidonia Metronet high-security psychiatric hospital in Cannes. With some other forum leaders from around the world, we have uncovered the simultaneous robberies of various governmental medical facilities and discovered that every remaining PCR Test is missing. Over the last few hours, we have been receiving conflicting reports, and here is where things get serious, Santa Claus has gone missing, and some eyewitnesses have supposedly seen none other than the evil Klaus Squabb flying his stolen slay with a gun pointed at Rudolph’s head. The Santa imposter seemingly intends to visit every house around the world delivering PCR testing kits. By our calculations, Father Christmas, if not found before midnight tonight might not have enough time to deliver his presents, thus, unfortunately, not one child will have a Christmas this year.”

Stopping for a moment a very short man with a hump whispers something into his ear.

“One of our highly trained agents has just finished interviewing a leading psychiatrist from the Posidonia Metronet high-security psychiatric hospital in Cannes, and he said that before his escape, Klaus Squabb didn’t take his medication, and had been frantically running around the hospital naked, screaming ‘I will have Net Zero’. We will ask you at this time, please not to approach him as he is armed and very dangerous.”

Suddenly the camera cuts back to the BBC studios and a nervous Julie Etchingham. “We will bring you more developments later, on ‘The BBC News at Ten.’
‘By golly, this Squabb is a cad bounder and we simply can’t have this,’ I think, looking at the black soot on my smouldering tiger skin rug. The phone rings and I answer it, “If it isn’t my old chum, Air vice-marshal Potty Bad Breath, from RAF Brice Norton, how are you? Happy Christmas old beany.”

“Happy Christmas to you, Giles my boy,” he says. “Listen up, I am so sorry to have to call you on Christmas eve, but I am going to need your help. We have just received satellite intel on the evil Klaus Squabb‘s whereabouts. Fifteen minutes ago, he was spotted flying over the skies of Calcutta. Now, we are going to have a flypast covering the area in roughly one hour. Giles, I need to ask you, can get yourself there, and we can guide you in so you can head him off at the Khyber Pass?”

“I say old chap, mum’s the word.”

Oh, one more thing Horton, the real Santa Klaus will need freeing from the make-believe jungles of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity, in Boreham Wood before Midnight if we are going to have any hope of saving Christmas. Horton, good luck old man, the world is relying on you.”

‘Well, if the world is relying on me, that’s it, I must prevail!’ I think to myself.

Ending the call, I leap out of my smoking jacket, throw on the 70s Safari suit, run into my kitchen, open the fridge, rip off the leg from the uncooked turkey and place it in my inside pocket, then quickly gather my adventurer stuff from my secret gun cabinet under the stairs, and head out the front door.

The bitter cold December night air bites straight through me, as I assess the wind direction of the Siberian-like blizzard that has just started swirling, and run as fast as my legs will take me to my favourite Lebanese kebab house at the end of my street on the corner of Berkley Square.

Subtly looking left, then right with my pinpoint accuracy 20/20 vision, I enter the building and go straight up to secret agent 004, Johnson Blond, the large pretend, unconvincing Arab waiter serving some dodgy-looking food to a family of four on a table by the window.

“Johnson old bean, I need to borrow Jamal the highper-sonic governmental camel. Late operations and all that, I’m sure you understand.” Then pulling out my uncooked leg of turkey I ask him,

“Can you also quickly fire this up, and throw on some spices please.”

Giving me a special agent nod and a wink, I walk out the back in the snow to his centre of operations and proceed to saddle up old Jamal.

Climbing on his back, 004, Johnson Blond brings me my scorching hot turkey leg, Jamal, starts with his angry camel noises and we slowly trot out onto the freezing wintery snowy Berkley Square.
Touching my juicy boiling hot spicey turkey leg, with trepidation, on Jamal’s backside, he screams as we take off, galloping leaving the ground, flying high up into the London night sky. Speeding our way across the globe, we finally reach our destination at the Khyber Pass.

At an altitude way higher than us, I hear the two RAF fighter jets scream past as they track their lasers onto a dark object up in the distance.

Taking a quick bite of my spicey leg, I slow Jamal down and carefully place it back into my inside pocket, pull out my Horton & Son, extendable pocket 270 rifle, look through the highly sensitive night sight lens, and all at once, I see him.

Dressed in black, the evil Klaus Squabb is on a sledge, with Rudolph and another reindeer that looks remarkably like Christine Legarde.

Carefully aiming, I gently squeeze the trigger, and Jamal lets off a very large amount of wind from both ends. I, unfortunately, miss Klaus, but do manage to shoot, both Rudolph’s red nose clean off, along with the other reindeer’s foot, and they go hurtling toward the ground.

Hyper-sonically reaching them Jamal lands and I run up to Klausy boy, tie him up, and hang him from the back of the slay by his hand, then quickly without anyone noticing, I reign up, attaching Jamal to the slay, and then notice a small tomato bush a few inches away, with the moon shining off a tomato. This gives me a cunning idea.
I reach over and take the shiny tomato, squash it onto Jamal’s nose, and now if any see, the slay, Jamal can hopefully pass off as Rudolph and no one will be the wiser.
Quickly I pull out my turkey leg, take a bite, and kindly offer a bit to Jamal. Thankfully not being interested, I jump in the sleigh, and with Jamal rained in, we are off, flying through the sky, as Klaus boy tries to clamber inside.

Not being a cruel man, I let him sit whilst still tied up, and tell him, “Crickey, you beast of a man, you are a bad egg,” as we fly back into UK airspace and gently guide Jamal and the slay over the streets of Borehamwood, Elstree, and we come nicely into land on the set of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here.

Once fully motionless, I leap out the slay, and with a bluntly sharpened samurai sword, I fight off the TV crew, rescue Santa Claus, throw Klaus Squabb onto the set of I’m a Celebrity, stick Santa Klaus in his slay, and we take off again up to the sky and back to Berkley Square.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Santa says to me, “Merry Christmas and a happy new year, old bean.”

With that, I jump out of the slay and fall down my chimney, breaking my way through the squashed-up PCR testing kits, into my living room and directly back into my smoking jacket in my comfy seat.

Pulling out the remaining bit of turkey leg, I can just about make out Santa Claus above my house shouting, “Ho, ho, ho, you’re not my Rudolph.”

Well now, I just put my head down, happy in the knowledge that I have saved Christmas for all those sweet little kiddie winks and fall asleep to the final few minutes of Hercule Poirot.

 

If you’ve missed the other adventures of Giles Tommly-Horton, read our Adventures blog to catch up

 

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