Apologies for Joey-bashing
.Stir-up Sunday
Joey Maynard was often referred to as “a champion butter-in”, and that was sometimes even with complete strangers. When it came to her own children her involvement was certainly most pronounced: she’d decided their personalities for them from the moment of their respective births, after all. Of course, she didn’t want to force them into anything; but if she could just give them a gentle push in the directions in which their lives were destined to go … well, what could possibly be wrong with that? She’d only be giving fate a helping hand, after all. It was too soon yet to worry about what the younger children were going to do when they went out into the big wide world, but the six eldest … ah, well now, she had a cunning plan where they were concerned; and closely involved in it was the annual making of the family Christmas pudding.
Feeding such a large family necessitated the production of a very substantial-sized pudding indeed; and on this particular year this took place, as it did in every year, on the last Sunday before Advent, with each of the many members of the Maynard clan taking their turn at stirring the mixture. That part of the proceedings over, Joey shooed everyone from the kitchen but herself and her long-time factotum Anna, whom she’d leave to finish making the pudding in a couple of minutes – but what a crucial couple of minutes they’d be! “Now,” she declared, “now for the important part. It’s time for my extra-special plan, Anna! It’s time to put my little helpers in!”
And she produced from a drawer six tiny silver items, and placed each of them carefully into the vast basin before her, smiling to herself as she so did. The ring, promising marriage within the year, was for Len. Now that should help her to make up her mind about that nice Reg Entwistle. She’d messed the poor boy about for far too long. Let her marry him and settle down on the Platz as the wife of a doctor and mother of a long family. It was what she’d been born to do, like her mother before her. Visions of a string of grandchildren danced before Joey’s eyes, and she beamed with delight.
Now the wishbone, for good luck, was for Con. Well, she was going to need it: the quiet, dreamy member of the family, she was never going to amount to very much without luck, was she? Joey doubted that Con was even able to look after herself, and wondered how on earth the middle triplet would manage once she was away from the Chalet School. Oh well, surely there wouldn’t be too much trouble that she could get into in the academic world of Oxford, would there? Anyway, that was Con sorted out. And then there was the thimble, which symbolised that the recipient would never marry. Well, of course Margot would marry in a way, but not in the conventional way. For life as a nun, in some distant part of the world, surely beckoned for the youngest and most difficult of the triplets, and hopefully this would prove it to her once and for all.
Well, that was the girls - and now for the boys! Well, first of all there was the silver coin, the finder of which would become wealthy. That was for Stephen, of course - designed to encourage him to work hard and make a success of his life. Rix and David were already both doctors, princes amongst young men, and she couldn’t run the risk of her own eldest son failing to meet expectations. That wouldn’t do at all. The fifth of the six items, the button which stood for bachelorhood, was for Charles, for she was sure that her second son was destined for the priesthood and this seemed like as good a way as any of at least starting to turn his thoughts in that direction. And, finally, the boot, representing travel, was for Mike, whom she hoped to see follow his cousin John into the Navy. Regrettably she couldn’t envision Mike as a doctor, but many naval men had already made good husbands for Chalet School girls, and she would dearly love to see her third son do the same. Maybe Lucy Peters would do for him, or perhaps Jean Morrison. She smiled at the thought. Everything was going to turn out just the way she planned.
All she had to do now was make sure that, when the pudding was served up on Christmas Day, the right person got the right charm.
Thank you!
Thanks Alison, that was great.
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