On Christmas morning, I heard on the BBC a claim, made by a dame of the British Empire no less, so inherently preposterous, yet so chilling in its implications, that my senses have been reeling ever since. Given its capacity for inculcating greed in young people, I'm amazed and shocked that the BBC should have been willing to publish it.
The claim had to do with gifts alleged by Dame Joan Sutherland to have been showered on her over Christmas by her true love - identity unspecified, but presumably her husband of many years, Richard Bonynge, the distinguished conductor. Since the 12 days of Christmas had at this stage yet to begin (purists tell me they start with Boxing Day, making today the fifth of them), the events she described must have happened last year. The process, as she recalled it, began unobjectionably, as Dame Joan took delivery of a partridge in a pear tree. Subsequent days brought, in modest numbers, various species of bird: turtle doves, French hens and calling birds - all listed by Dame Joan in a tripping, insouciant manner. At this point, however, her manner changed. The next line was delivered more slowly, and much more portentously. The reason, I thought, was clear: the flow of birds had at that point dried up, and five gold rings had arrived. The calculation was clear. "Whoopee," the Dame must have told herself. "At last he's out of the aviary and into the jeweller's."
But here she was wrong. On day six - New Year's Eve, and a day when last year much of the world was busy mistakenly hailing the imminent dawn of a new millennium - the supply of jewellery ceased and the flow of birds resumed with six geese a-laying, followed by seven swans swimming on New Year's Day. From here on, the arrival of presents assumed quite alarming dimensions, with eight maids a milking on Sunday, nine ladies dancing on Monday, 10 lords a-leaping (unlikely under this Labour government to have been hereditary peers) on Tuesday, 11 pipers piping on Wednesday, and finally 12 drummers drumming on Thursday, January 6.
Similar claims, of course, have been made before, but never in my experiences with the authority of a dame of the British Empire. And never before had I realised the magnitude of what was alleged. For each item in the consignment was delivered not once but daily from its inception: the partridges, complete with their pear trees, on 12 successive days, the turtle doves on 11 and the French hens on 10. As figure one shows, the total of presents delivered had by the end reached 364: one for every day of the year except Christmas Day.
A little further analysis revealed one of those arithmetical pleasures which cause serious mathematicians to find such tear-jerking beauty in their profession. The sequence of these deliveries takes the form of what we bookish folk call a palindrome, though I guess you might also call it a perfect parabola. The first and last arrivals will in each case have contributed 12 to the final total (that is, 12x1 partridge-in-pear-tree, 1x12 drumming drummers.) The second and the penultimate category muster 22 each (11x2 turtle doves, 2x11 pipers). The acme is reached with the geese and the swans, of whom at the end there are 42 in each case (ie 6x7 swans a swimming, and 7x6 geese a laying.)
But that was only the start of it. As I contemplated the enormity of what Mr Bonynge had done, I began to assess its dire implications for public health and animal welfare. It is clear when you study the make-up of Dame Joan's gifts that other deliveries too must have taken place. The turtle doves will have needed a dovecote, and so on. One can easily imagine the crisis which must have occurred on day eight when the milking maids appeared on the scene. Note that Dame Joan specifies that the maids were not just milkmaids on their day off but were maids a -milking: ergo, they must have brought cows. Just how many cows is beyond my powers of computation. Ideally, there would have been eight, one for each maid. By the end of the process, though, a further 32 maids would have arrived, each presumably with a cow. A congregation like that would have needed a byre, and one very much hopes one was built to Maff specifications.
But worse still, the maids would have needed somewhere to sleep, as would the next day's contingent, the lords; and anyone even mildly familiar with the wicked ways of the aristocracy would hope the two groups were not billeted too close together. Perhaps rooms were found for these people down the road at the Dove and Drummer; but there may at a season like this have been no room at the inn. The problem would have grown even graver when the pipers arrived. What kind of pipes they were piping is nowhere specified: we must hope that they were not bagpipes, for bagpipers have to practise, and had they insisted on doing so close to the spot where the maids and the lords were attempting to sleep (preferably, as I say, not together), the standard of performance in the milking parlour and the leaping arena next day might have left Dame Joan disappointed. Since drummers are, if anything, even noisier than pipers, it is just as well the drummers were only there for one day.
And yet, were they? What happened to this gallimaufry of people and birds once the 12 days of Christmas were over is something of which Dame Joan neither sang nor spoke. Were they all paid off and sent home on January 7? Or do they continue to cluster around her home? And if so, are they now being joined by a further Christmas collection marshalled at the behest of Dame Joan's loving spouse? She published an autobiography in 1997, I see. Perhaps the time has come to update it.
