Strange and lost horses for missing courses

On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me . . . well, this pair actually.

It has to be said that in turtle-dove terms they're distinctly solid and, er, horse-like. Anyway here they are, penned up at the side of the church at Fa and nobody knows who they belong to.

I first discovered them in the deepening gloom last night while trying to take out the ash from the wood burner, and realised that in rather hostile horse language they weren't going to let me get to the wheelie-bins.

Seeing, in the cold light of day just how much I would have trodden in, maybe they were doing me a favour and one should be grateful for small mercies.

So perhaps they were sent here by the raging Furies and fickle winds of mischance and twisted fortune. It's also possible that they were sent by the Anti Smoking Police, because every time girlfriend Claire goes out for a fag, they either make strange and scary ghostly horse noises in the dark or by day they just stare at her intently, pointedly and balefully.

It all has an agreeably seasonal symmetry: No room at inn, hapless gees chucked out to make room in stable, gees fetch up sheltering under wall of church. Alternatively some silly sod somewhere hasn't learned how to shut the gate, though this explanation tends to lack charm, Christmas romanticism or indeed any class and style at all.

Still, it seems to have been a Christmas of minor mishaps all round: Down at the ever-genial Cafédefa, Dave the Underdog (formerly known as Barman) regaled us with the tale of how all his grandchildren's presents ended up in the dustbin.

While making an overnight flying visit to Fa, He Who Was Responsible became over-zealous in tidying up his accommodation and assumed that the handily positioned bin-liner contained crap . . . which all ended up in an SOS phone call, a rescue mission by Dave in suitably seasonal silly Santa hat and a huge dry-cleaning bill from the Christmas fairy, who is apparently also suing for false imprisonment in someone's manky old dustbin.

Actually Dave was still wearing his silly hat while spilling the beans but I think this was only a ruse to look cute and charming while trying to get a Christmas kiss off Claire (he succeeded).

By the way, we succeeded in having another turkey-free Christmas, thanks to Claire's fab saumon en papillotte (salmon steaks with carrots, leeks and mushrooms fried in butter and crème fraîche, deeply yum) for the Réveillon (Christmas Eve) and my own offering of Morroccan-style lamb with coriander, prunes and mushrooms with veg on Christmas Day.

If this latter dish seems perversely multi-faith on my part, well (a) I prefer lamb to turkey and (b) if they had had Crimbo dinner in Palestine in Zero A.D. it's odds-on that they would have eaten lamb rather than a huge, dry, flightless thing from America which would not be discovered for another 1,500 years . . .