Day #3 – In the Spirit
It’s a run-down old mansion. Vines and creeper crawling over crumbling walls, shattered windows resembling broken, rotted teeth, and the roof pocked with holes and carpeted with mould. The stairs leading to the front door are rickety and unstable, the path from the gate is uneven and sprouting weeds.
Great. Surely this is the wrong address? I check the text again, but this is the right place. I chew my bottom lip – how the hell am I going to turn this place into a Christmas-drenched hall in a few hours? Jessicah, my boss, said the employer wants it screaming ‘Christmas’ and ‘festive’ before 6 pm tonight. Right. I can feel myself starting to panic, which is never good. Shut it down, breathe. This is your job. You can do this.
Just think.
Ok. An idea begins forming, and confidence blossoms. I can do this. Not alone, clearly, so I call a few friends – a few of them big, burly men who can handle heavy items and hard labour – and fire off emails to others asking them to pick things up for me.
This is going to be tight, but I can manage.
The work is gruelling, dirty, exhausting, but as a group we work hard and bring the theme together. At last, I stand back and admire our efforts.
By the old, cobweb-laced fireplace is a ratty old Christmas tree, dull and nasty decorations wilting from wispy branches. Mouldy, moth-eaten stockings hang from the mantel. From the ceiling hang ropes of tinsel and paper chains, colours faded and their quality sorry and limp.
The entire ballroom looks ready for Krampus to clomp through it. A haunted Christmas, a bygone celebration – the death of festivities that had been prepared and then left to wither and fade.
This was definitely a party full of Christmas spirit – the dead kind!
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