The Twelve Days of Christmas: 10

On the tenth day of Christ­mas, my true love gave to me: ten lords a-leaping.

My true love was going through a nihil­istic phase. It hap­pens occa­sion­ally. So whilst I will con­fess that I was moment­ar­ily taken aback to find ten man­nequins dressed in robes, fake ermine and long wigs piled in the back of a hire van parked out­side our flat, I wasn’t per­haps too sur­prised to also find a scrawled note taped to the steer­ing wheel.

“Am at Beachy Head. Meet me there. Have paid for van. Bring mannequins.”

At this point, any ref­er­ence to Beachy Head would have made most people fear the worst, thanks to its unen­vi­able repu­ta­tion as this country’s fore­most sui­cide loc­a­tion and beauty spot. But as I turned my key in the igni­tion, put my foot on the accel­er­ator and poin­ted the van in the dir­ec­tion of East­bourne, I knew that the only things going off the cliffs would be a few demons. It’s cath­artic, apparently.

It was dusk by the time I pulled the van into the tour­ist car park. I rolled down the win­dow and called out to my true love, who was sit­ting on the grass verge await­ing my arrival.

“I’ve got your man­nequins for you.”

“And I’ve got the ten com­mand­ments,” my true love shouted back with unres­trained glee, approach­ing the van and wav­ing some large sheets of paper at me.

With day­light fad­ing fast, we shared the task of car­ry­ing the cheap plastic man­nequins from the car park to the edge of Beachy Head. It required a few jour­neys back and forth, but even­tu­ally the parade of ten eer­ily fea­ture­less mod­els was ready for final inspection.

Catch­ing my breath, I turned to my true love and finally posed the ques­tion that any­one else would have raised many hours earlier.

“So, humour me … what the hell are we doing stand­ing at Beachy Head with ten dum­mies dressed as escapees from the House of Lords?”

“It’s all about laws. Rules. Com­mand­ments,” my true love answered con­fid­ently, as if this sort of beha­viour was a per­fectly accept­able part of every­day normality.

“No, you’ve com­pletely lost me, I’m afraid. And I’m cold. And I want to go home. Now.”

“Look. In the song, the ten lords a-leaping rep­res­ent the ten com­mand­ments, right? The ulti­mate laws about how to live one’s life. We’re all hide­bound by rules from day one, from the moment we can under­stand our moth­ers wag­ging a dis­ap­prov­ing fin­ger at us and mouth­ing the word ‘no’. But now, I want out of it. I want out of it all.”

Slowly, my true love began walk­ing down the line of slightly windswept law lords, pin­ning the pieces of paper to the front of their robes. On each sheet, a thick marker pen had been used to inscribe one of the ten com­mand­ments in almost obsess­ively neat block cap­it­als — from ‘THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME’ through ‘HONOUR THY FATHER AND MOTHER’ to the final ‘THOU SHALT NOT COVET ANY THING THAT IS THY NEIGHBOUR’S’.

With all the man­nequins dressed in their regal finery and adorned with each of God’s holy laws, I unwisely chose this moment to query some of the finer details.

“Er, that last one — shouldn’t it men­tion some­thing about not cov­et­ing thy neighbour’s wife, manser­vant, maid­ser­vant, ox or ass?”

My true love glared at me.

“I’m using the abridged ver­sion, OK?”

“Fine. Just checking.”

The sun was finally dis­ap­pear­ing below the hori­zon as we car­ried the plastic fig­ures the last few feet to the brink of the cliff. One by one, we threw each man­nequin high into the air — shriek­ing with a mix­ture of hatred and manic delight as they were sent to their death — and listened for the sound of them crash­ing onto the rocks some five hun­dred and thirty feet below. All the rules were being well and truly broken.

Crazy? Cath­artic? Yes, abso­lutely. But a pecu­liar kind of sense? Def­in­itely. Much as I some­times hate to admit it, my true love and I are made for each other.

• Intro­duc­tion | The Twelve Days of Christ­mas: 11 »