The Twelve Days of Christmas: 2

On the second day of Christ­mas, my true love gave to me: two turtle doves.

At first, I puzzled over this gift — what did it mean? Why two turtle doves? — until my true love lapsed into a laugh­able attempt at Cock­ney rhym­ing slang.

“Turtle dove equals love. Oh, you know — feast yer mince pies on that? Up the old apples ‘n’ pears? Cor blimey, guv’nor. Born wiv­vin the sahnd o’ bow bells, innit?”

I couldn’t stop snig­ger­ing, but at least I got the idea.

So the two turtle doves took up res­id­ence with us, liv­ing in the grand­est gil­ded cage that our mea­gre funds could buy. My true love and I spent the long dark nights wrapped in each other’s arms, listen­ing to the doves coo­ing gently to one another. They were fall­ing more and more in love, just as we were.

Winter came and went, and one spring morn­ing I pulled the cover from the cage to find our two doves sit­ting at oppos­ite ends of the perch, their backs turned, each refus­ing to look at the other. Their feath­ers were ruffled; a couple lay on the floor of the cage, obvi­ously hav­ing been pulled out in the heat of a viol­ent argument.

My true love and I spent the rest of the day con­sid­er­ing the situ­ation care­fully, whilst sit­ting at oppos­ite ends of the sofa, our backs turned, refus­ing to look each other.

“It’s obvi­ous that your dove upset my dove,” said my true love, firmly and dis­pas­sion­ately. “I think you should move out and take your dove with you. You can have half the bird-seed, but I insist on keep­ing the cage.”

I packed my bags. We divided up the spoils of our rela­tion­ship, agree­ing sur­pris­ingly amic­ably on who owned which books and CDs. Finally, it was time for me to take my turtle dove and depart. There was only one problem.

“So which is your dove, and which is mine?” I asked.