Mary and her much loved next door neighbour Annie were discussing what to do for Christmas .They had both lost their husbands on their journey through life. I have to inform you here ear Annie who was the mistress of Mary’s husband Stanley for the years at the end of his life and ironically it made her closer to Mary

In fact Mary believed that Annie had killed her own husband because she needed the insurance money. Mary had not said anything because it would never happen. Furthermore she did not have any proof inl but it was a gut reaction as the husband disappeared very suddenly. But she had been a big help to Mary when Stan was ill. She even took 0 their cat Emile out t in her shopping trolley so he could enjoy local scene without danger of getting lost or attacked on route.

And the doctor had never been called.

She will believe what she says because she is so polite

Even if you call the doctor now they don’t come but a few years ago they did especially to old people.

But why had Annie not called 999 and left Dave to have a look at her husband it she was worried about him? That is very suspicious. perhaps her husband never felt ill until she hit him on the head with a cast iron saucepan.

Annie had told her that her husband ran away with his sister-in-law and they had gone to New Zealand but Mary knows she has a lot more money now than she did before. And she did not have a job Perhaps an unknown relative left her some money in their will.

Could Annie have murdered one of her relatives without Mary getting a hint of this crime?

Is your daughter Lyra coming home for Christmas Annie said to Mary. We have not seen her for a very long time. What pity she never had any children. Are you sorry about it? Oh I’m so sorry I should not have said that because it’s not my right to pry into your affairs.

it’s odd that you say that because I got a letter from her this morning or should I say an email from her, she said she’s going to go to Morocco because she doesn’t like the weather in England in December and January and she’s got a cheap holiday for 4 weeks in Morocco for only £69.69.

That’s very cheap replied Annie Do you think we should go to Morocco? Somewhere similar?

No said Mary I don’t like being in a hotel at Christmas.and do they have Turkeys in Morocco?

No they probably have Turkish people but not turkeys

Well we can’t have a roasted Turkish person for Christmas dinner because we are no longer man eating people Annie joked. Well we might have been eating Boris Johnson. Descended from a Turk so I read in the New York Times

They wouldn’t know how to cook Turkeys properly over there.Mary told her .

What I’m proposing is that we will stay here in your house Mary for Christmas morning so I can help too with the cooking and since you have got a big dining room we can invite a couple of local people who have nowhere to go to come and eat a Christmas dinner with us 

But what about Dave our favourite paramedic? Shall we invite him to have Christmas dinner with us?

No we won’t invite him. But we can ring 999 and get him to come round if the leg falls off the table. I hope the leg doesn’t fall off while we are eating the dinner though

Well for goodness sake get a man to look at the table before Christmas.

Alright I will get someone to come and look at my leg as well. I can get that nice man Tom who came last year.

You are a total nutcase. He’s a carpenter your leg is not made of wood

I see I made the wrong kind of logical conclusions

A carpenter can mend the table leg or the chair leg. But we need a doctor for our painful human legs

We could listen to the King making his speech at 3pm on ChristmS Day and we must watch because it will be a historic occasion it will be his first time as the King at Christmas. He must have spent a long time preparing for this moment and deciding what to put into a speech but he’s got to be careful with the present government 

Yes that’s alright by me, if I make the Christmas pudding will you make the mince pies?

Oh yes I will said Annie I quite like making pastry., I might put some brandy in

Then at 4 pm we’ll have a cup of our favourite Earl Grey tea and we can send the visitors back to their own home or whatever else they want to go go and then we will go to your house or should we do the washing up first?

We can gossip about the neighbours moan about the government and wonder how we will keep warm in the very cold weather We will find out what’s on the television or we could even get a DVD of something like Ben-Hur. You see it’s a very long film and the leading actor Charlton Heston is extremely handsome so it will give us someone to fantasise about. And the chariot ride is very exciting even if you’ve seen it before

But you won’t relax when you see the main character’s mother and his sister being sent to prison then a leper colony.

Well you know what I mean. It’s very well made unlike the more recent ones and you know that good will prevail in the end athough later Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. They killed almost everyone in Jerusalem and set the temple on fire.

It’s only a provisional arrangement because who knows you might meet some charming man between now and Christmas but let’s promise each other that we won’t let each other down by going off with a stranger for the Christmas weekend. Even if he looks like Charlton Heston. You should know by now appearances can be very deceptive.

I don’t really mind said Mary. I could even rewrite my thesis as they want me to make it 50% shorter.

Well that’s not difficult said her friend.

You could just cut it in half with a pair of kitchen scissors.

I don’t think statisticians would like that, Mary informed her. 

Well in that case you could apply to become a student at the school of art and you can present that as 2 halves of a thesis glued to a breadboard with a pair of kitchen scissors glued in the middle and some red paint splashed on the things. Or even some tar

Alternatively you could simply have your dissertation retyped and leave out the last two chapters then you would have to write a new conclusion of course but that wouldn’t be tremendous lot of effort effort

But the last option will give me more to think about,Mary cried.Who wants to think about numbers on Christmas Day.

Sometimes we need to think about numbers like the number of guests who are coming for Christmas dinner. Few people want to calculate the standard deviation from the average wage and it’s a median average you can’t calculate the standard deviation. No it’s not a ratio scale.

You’ve lost me cried Annie. What on earth is a ratio? You could start giving tutorials on statistics to the retired population of Knittingham.

So say all of us