Chain Story - The Adventures of Clarence
Created | Updated Nov 22, 2015
Chapter Three - A Christmas Story
... made him think of the song:
Plaisir du mariage ne dure qu'un moment —
Chagrin du mariage dure tous le mariage...
... although he wasn't sure if he'd got it right, or what it meant. He certainly didn't remember any 'plaisir'. All he seemed to be getting was the chagrin.
And now the dreaded Pancake Gang were after him too, shouting at him to take his wife back — she was as bad as her mother and was reducing the big tough Pancake Gang almost to tears. On top of that, it had started to snow: pure, white, fluffy snow just like on a Christmas card. He hobbled and skidded off in the direction of...
... Santa's Workshop, where he realised there were a lot of people even shorter than he was. 'I'm tall at last!' he thought. 'I always wanted to be tall and now I am...'
... He turned round and towered over the Pancake Gang, who'd followed him into the workshop.
'Take that!' he cried. He squirted them with lemon juice, sugar and honey. Immediately the Gang shrivelled up and melted into nothingness, while a tiny voice on the wind whispered, 'They're not the same without Robbie Williams...'
'Oy!' yelled a dwarf, 'you can't come in here, squirting stuff around like that! There's North Pole Health and Safety Regulations to consider, up here with all the ice and other hazardous materials which may be lying around!'
The dwarf ran up and slapped him with his clipboard on his...
... head. Clarence ducked and looked sheepish for some reason, although he still felt very tall.
He wondered why the dwarf was wearing a clipboard on his head. Then he realised — it was because...
... of the fact that the clipboard was in actual fact a mortar board, and in fact these dwarfs were lecturers in a school. A school of Santa Claus helpers. Now you might wonder where Clarence got all of this information, and you would be right to wonder. But the sign above the dwarf was really the key factor in defining all of this. It said...
SKHOOL FOR SANTA CLAUS HELLPERS
ONLY THE BEST!
TOYS R US TAKE ALL THE REST!
Lern to maKe Toys 'n mAke 'em Pay by BRinging SMiles
to Kidies on Christmass day!
No time waisters please! Deddiccated Dwarfes 'n Elves Only!
... which helped Clarence to work it out a bit. Behind the lecturer he could see an open door to Santa's Workshop, where the dwarfs and elves were working furiously to get the toys ready for Christmas. He wasn't sure why they were furious, but they certainly didn't look very pleased. To the left was the door to the Skhool. He chose the...
... Skhool door. Opening it, he saw that Darling Dwayne the Daredevil Dwarf was lecturing to a full classroom about his harrowing adventures in the woods of Winnipeg, and his battle with the bear that attacked him from out of the...
... cupboard in the uni's science labs. Clarence was very bemused by all of this. He wondered whether he was still asleep and dreaming this whole thing up, so he banged his head against the door. And it hurt. No, he was still here. While nursing his sore head he looked up and found the entire classroom glaring at him. 'You broke the door! That's a heavy penalty! Now you have to...
... mend it because if someone comes along and makes our stairs murmur and lose their feet and want to knock on the door there'll be no door for them and it's not a good no door but a bad no door and we don't have time to spray the lecture hall to get rid of bad no-doors because if we stop learning even for a second the skhoolteecher will wake up and beat us and...
... if he sees the bear it'll be even worse he'll go mad cos he carn't bear them and he'll get the other teechers out of the common room, where everyfing's very common, that's why the they have teechers there and...
... bears...
... bears in the cupboards, as they were all over the place, polar bears of course as this was the North Pole, and teechers and lecherers sitting in big armchairs, sleeping. Clarence was feeling bewildered by all this commotion, and so...
... he curled up in a ball under one of the desks and shut his eyes very tight, and pretended he was...
... somewhere else, but he wasn't — he was still in the Skhool lecher hall with a lot of angry students who picked him up (his head hit the ceiling of the little wooden shack), made him mend the door and sat him down at one of the desks to start at the lerning work. The old teecher didn't wake up.
This was all very strange. Clarence found it hard to connect the word 'student' with the word 'work', until he saw that for these students, working consisted of staring out of the window at the snow, sleeping off their hangovers, fighting, drawing rude pictures, writing love-letters to each other in their notebooks, shouting at each other, getting drunk, snogging in the corner and occasionally tiptoeing up to the old teecher sleeping under his black gown and mortar board at the High Desk to see if he was still alive or dead. This reminded Clarence of uni (except he still couldn't quite reconcile the words 'student' and 'attendance at lectures'), so he felt quite at home.
Suddenly a bell sounded and the teecher woke up in a cloud of dust that had settled on him and shouted, 'OUT!' Everyone ran towards the door, but it wouldn't open. Clarence, not the best handyman in the world, had nailed it firmly shut. The students milled around in annoyance and panic. Then...
... something outside started knocking on the door...
... and there came the sound of bells ringing high in the sky. The other students stared at each other, horrified, and then ran to hide under the tables, while the lecturer started bumbling around and cursing to himself quietly. Clarence was quite startled, and not quite sure what to do, so he...
... whipped out his trusty...
... emergency-armadillo...
... because that's the one thing everyone needs to carry - you never know when it might come in handy! But staring at it, Clarence wondered...
... if it's true what they say: is an armadillo really crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside?
He stood there (five-foot- nothing in his six-inch heels), distracted by this thought, when...
... someone suddenly punched a hole through the door. After the initial shock, Clarence suddenly saw a rather scary face through the hole. It wasn't scary in your traditional sense of scary. In fact, it was a pretty female face. Long dark brown hair. Pretty brown eyes. But it was scary because it was the face of his wife. This terrified Clarence until he gathered himself together and realised it was really the friendly ruddy face of Father Christmas, who was shouting something at him through the hole in the door...
'Get out of the way, you dolt!' he shouted. 'I want to get to the loo, and you're standing in my way.'
Clarence stood aside out of respect for the old man, whose bladder was probably pretty painful for him.
Father Christmas hobbled through to the loo, did his business and then (in a considerably better mood) apologised for his brusqueness earlier. 'You have no idea the pressures that weigh on me at this time of year,' F.C. said sadly. 'Meeting the payroll for the elves alone would be enough to give an old man grey...
... hair, and don't mention the reindeer or making sure the toys are ready or having to negotiate all those chimneys all over the world in one night.'
Clarence didn't mention the reindeer or making sure the toys were ready or having to negotiate all those chimneys all over the world in one night. He couldn't have, even of he wanted to, for suddenly there came a flash of thunder and a rumble of lightning, and lo and behold...
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