According to tradition, every Boxing Day Eve, the young personfolk of the pinched little town of Fang’s Peach would tumble out of their rustic hovels at three in the morning and immediately knock themselves unconscious on unseen walls, palings, hitching posts and adjoining hovels, so deep and impenetrable was the starless winter darkness of the town, which cowered abjectly at the foot of imposing Mount Sod, as mean and massive a mountain as you’re ever likely to see see, Best Bedraggled.
In such a state the youngfolk would slumber until dawn approached, when their mothers would rouse them by pouring cold porridge into their ears. Thus fortified they sprang to their feet, garbed themselves in brightly coloured elastane of the most ludicrous sort and indulged in all manner of outlandish calisthenics and bending routines before grabbing their heavy and knotted wooden sledges and dashing off to the foot of Mount Sod, where ranged judges awaited them.
The reason for all of this apparently pointless exertion in the midwinter gloom was actually pointless. At some unspecified point in the town’s long and obscure history, a local dignitary, possibly one who had a beard or a misleadingly wise mien, had deemed this day to be reserved for an annual contest where the first young folkling to sledge unaided to the top of Mount Sod would be crowned Queen of Boxing Day Eve, presented with a dusty bouquet of boxes and permitted to sup honeyed ale at any house in town, from the day of their triumph until the following Boxing Day Eve Eve.
That this absurd tradition should have been seized upon with such enthusiasm by the people of Fang’s Peach can perhaps be attributed to their notable affection for free beer, or perhaps to the lack of any other entertainments during the long horrid winters in the fat shadow of Mount Sod. Save for turnip whittling and the telling of fortunes from omens in the mud outside the betting shop, there was really nothing to distract the mind of a sharp young Fang’s Peacher from the elaborate preparations required of all competitors in the sledging contest.
First one must construct one’s heavy and knotted wooden sledge, which would be ceremoniously burned in a bonfire following the contest. It was important to make one’s sledge as heavy and knotted as possible - oak was the preferred timber, and some competitors had been known to carve and glue on ersatz knots when sufficiently gnarled wood was not naturally available. This show of bravado sent a troubling message to one’s fellow competitors that this sledger was so lithe and confident as to expect victory with even the clumsiest of steeds. Plastic was severely frowned upon; merely mentioning carbon fibre would see one hounded to the parish boundary, possibly with hounds, more likely with cows.
Next, the younglings would turn their attention to their sledging costumes. Again, the standard policy was one of bluff and bluster, so impracticality was the key. This general strategy allowed for wide variation in form and materials - so while most competitors stuck to a fairly conventionally sporty theme, with garish and flimsy elastane leotards cleverly shredded in decorative patterns so as to provide the minimum warmth and support, a few free-thinkers would appear in complex and bustled tweed ballgowns, velvet diving suits or ornamental iron cages.
Finally, it was necessary to prepare oneself, physically and mentally, for the gruelling sledge up Mount Sod. This was a task which the youths of Fang’s Peach took extremely seriously, and to which they devoted their wholehearted dedication all year long, but concerning which there was no reliable consensus as to the best approach. Some would become freakish about their fitness, haring and sprinting round the backlanes, or hefting milk churns and Shetland ponies until they were hard and stringy as fresh celery. Others sought to increase their bulk, gorging their way through the seasons on potatoes and cream and parsley and avocet’s eggs and salsify and spring onions and truffles. Still others regarded the sledging challenge as primarily a spiritual task, and spent their year earnestly contemplating in huts, emerging wan and enlightened as the first snowflakes fluttered down to melt upon their shaven brows and parsnip robes.
Thus the cavalcade of youngling who gambolled towards the lower slopes of the vast mountain was composed of all shapes, sizes, fitness levels and states of mental preparedness. But one thing they all knew was the intense sternness of the ranged judges who would confront them from behind their ranged tables hung with frozen bunting, examine their sledges for unauthorised devices, pin numbers to their inadequate costumes (every competitor was given the number 14 for reasons too terrifying to recount) and direct them cheerlessly to the starting line.*
The sternness of the judges pertained especially to the stipulation that contenders must sledge to the summit of Mount Sod ‘unaided’, which in their fanaticism they interpreted as meaning ‘without the aid of any other person, device or implement which would not be necessary for standard, i.e. downhill, sledging’. This meant that not only were the sledgers forbidden to bring along friends to help them by shoving or lugging them up the mountain (even if they’d had any friends who were not themselves contestants) but also that any engines, oars, stout sticks, wheels, poles or even their own hands, feet or heads, extended over the edge of their sledges and thrust into the icy ground in order to haul themselves up the slopes, were all grounds for instant disqualification. These brave lads and she-lads were expected to scale the snowy peak using the power of their stationary seated persons alone, as decreed by that revered but forgotten public figure so many confused years ago.
As you can imagine, the scenes at the starting line following the firing of the starting party-popper were dismal indeed. Those who had trained in pure spiritual practice tended to fare worst, but were also best able to accept their failure. Typically they remained seated cross-legged in meditation upon their sledges at the starting line until it was time for elevenses whereupon they rose, bowed to the judges and returned to their huts to commence training for the following year’s contest.
The remainder of the contestants were not so serene. With much straining and reddening perspiration they thrashed and lurched on their sledges, arms and legs drawn up so as not to arouse the ire of the judges. Remarkably, every year a few sinewy sledgers were in this manner able to inch their way forward from the starting line, albeit slowly and tortuously. However, another tradition of the contest was that the starting line was always set up some ten feet in front of Beshy’s Drip, a gentle dip in the ground which was roughly two feet deep at the front, but whose back was a sheer rock wall six feet high, against which even the most talented uphill sledger was inevitably scuppered.
This unfortunate confluence of majestic geography and imbecilic custom meant that every Fang’s Peach Boxing Day Eve Sledge (Unaided) Up Mount Sod Contest since its hazy inauguration had ended in travesty, without a winner, and with every single contestant slithering to ignoble failure at most a few feet from the starting line, with the mighty mountain looming over them, mocking them with its jagged foothills and snowy upslopes. After several hours of increasingly exhausted thrashing and writhing from the doomed competitors, the stern judges would eventually grow bored, and would blow their judging whistles to signal the end of the contest, whereupon, wailing and weeping, the young failures would pick up their heavy sledges and drag them to the town square, to be cast onto a sombre bonfire, spitting with bitter disappointment.
And in this manner had the fearsome contest played out every year. Until three years ago. That year the fateful day dawned pinker and parkier than usual, but it was the same old litany of ill-fated youngsters who arose and hauled their lumpen crafts, bedecked in rainbow-hued rags.
But then, just as the last participants lined up in place, ready for the off, a curious figure appeared, striding purposefully from the stinking alleys up to the starting line, his hair sprinkled with frost, and his ears red as ketchup. It was hard to say whether or not he was entirely unknown to the town - some thought that they had seen him once at a party thrown by the butcher, others that he might be the son of the woman who did for the postman but never spoke. He trudged towards the judges, his blue fake fur robe billowing in the breeze, his Wellington sandals glittering, with bright eyes and unkempt beard, carrying a staff of hazel and a Beano annual from 1979.
“Halt, stern judges!” cried the robed figure in querulous tones “I am your final competitor, and demand a competitor’s number!”
The sternest judge of all raised two forbidding eyebrows and said, “Oh yes? Then where is your sledge, lad?”
“Behold!” quavered the interloper, casting his Beano annual to the ground before the starting line and nimbly hopping onto it.
The assembled youngsters laughed heartily at this novelty, but the stern judge merely peeled off a number fourteen from his bumper pad of number fourteens, thumped it onto the robed back and retreated to his judging table, whereupon the second sternest judge raised the starting party-popper and fired.
At once, the competitors began their usual flailing and groaning and meditating. The stranger however, remained immobile, standing resolutely atop his annual, his eyes fixed on the summit of the great mountain. The judges kept a close eye on him, for they were suspicious of his hazel staff and its potential as an illegal device. But the stranger did not move.
After about fifteen minutes of this nonsense, something very unexpected happened. A movement was seen on the north face of the mountain itself. This was unexpected because the mountain was a particularly inhospitable place, avoided by climbers and even wildlife photographers, since the only wildlife to be found there were several particularly unattractive species of lichen, and some exceptionally bad-tempered mountain goats who ate the lichen (which gave them terrible indigestion and made them even more bad-tempered). That the dark brown specks which could be seen descending the mountain gradually resolved themselves into the shapes of several dozen of these notorious goats was a source of some perturbation to the less enlightened sledgers, and even to certain of the younger and least stern judges.
The goats galloped down the lower slopes of the mountain, skipped over the fretful sledgers and tenderly gathered around the robed stranger, who smiled but said nothing. Immediately, the goats began to nudge the stranger forward, the polished cardboard of his Beano annual sliding easily over the snow as the goats expertly manoeuvred their baffling cargo towards the summit of Mount Sod.
They had a little trouble at the rock face of Beshy’s Drip of course, but these goats were no fools and the stranger was quickly borne aloft on a pyramid of goats, cleared the Drip, and was soon speeding up the mountain surrounded by his woolly companions, never once wavering in his expression or heroic stance. Indeed within half an hour, the townsfolk of Fangs Peach saw the party reach the summit of the mountain, where the stranger raised his arms in triumph, silhouetted against the clear winter sky, the goats scampering and bleating around him.
The disarray which these events created at the foot of the mountain was considerable. The judges immediately formed themselves into two main factions - one which maintained that the stranger had clearly cheated since he had been helped by friends (even if those friends were of a non-human genus) and another which said that he had won the contest fairly as he could not be said to have solicited the aid of the goats by any discernible means (and that anyway the town should be grateful that the contest finally had a winner and could divest itself of the increasingly dusty bouquet of boxes), while several dissenting voices demanded a rematch, demanded an explanation of how the stranger had gained control of the minds of the mountain goats, demanded flasks of hot coffee and finally demanded to be carried home to a warm futon. Such was the loss of propriety by the judges that there was no final whistles blown that year, and the remaining competitors were left fidgeting and swaying by themselves until they eventually gave up and drifted away, leaving their unburnt sledges where they stood.
The stranger has never been seen since that tumultuous morning. Many believe that he lives still at the summit of the mountain with his four-legged disciples, and some have sought out his wisdom, only to be repelled by the icy slopes, the ugly lichen and the hissing goats. The judges continue to squabble over the proper outcome of the contest, and have yet to deliver a unanimous verdict, so for the last two Boxing Day Eves, the contest has not been held, and the young people of Fang’s Peach have found other interests to occupy them, like twine-curling and seaweed-shaving, while their books on uphill sledging and leotard shredding grow yellow on the shelves. And on Boxing Day Eve they sleep in their beds until lunchtime, dreaming happy sledgeless dreams in the shadow of mysterious Mount Sod.
THE END
*The reason for the judges’ sternness was bitterness at their own wasted youth of relentless and futile sledge training. Thus does each generation bequeath an inheritance of thwarted dreams to the next (see The Philip Larkin Parenting Manual).
