My Guardian Angel

I returned from a brief visit to the corner shop to be confronted by an apparition in the middle of my living room. This ungainly figure was trying to balance on its toes in a pair of battered runners from which sprouted two hairy legs. Above knobbly knees and flabby thighs was a bright pink tutu and a Chesty Bond singlet enclosing a flat, hairy chest. Its wings looked as though they had been cobbled together using wire coat hangers and the feathers from a couple of plucked chickens. The star on the wand was held on with sticky tape. Peeping from beneath the cascading, golden, Shirley Temple ringlets was the face of a boxer who had lost too many fights.

"Who the Hell are you?" I asked.

"No. No. I'm not from Hell, I'm from the other place. My name is Gelna. I'm your guardian angel." The voice was a mellifluous baritone. "I've come to grant your wish. However, perhaps I should first explain why I look like this. Every day one of us is selected to visit the person to whom he is guardian angel. It's kind of a lucky draw. Used to be just one name drawn from the barrel each day, but they computerised it recently and old St. Peter hasn't quite got the hang of the system yet. This morning he managed to selected 15 names, and I was a bit slow in the race to the body parts bin. Sorry."

"I don't suppose I should complain about your appearance if you are here to grant me a wish. Can I ask for anything I like? "

"No. No. What you can wish for is quite specific. That's also selected by the computer each day. Today you can wish to have dinner with any three people you like, living or dead, and I will arrange it."

"How long have I got to decide?"

He consulted his large diver's watch. "Sorry I've been so long-winded. You now have precisely 7 minutes and 30 seconds to choose who, where and when, starting from... NOW."

The names of writers like Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Stephen King, and James Joyce began to flash through my mind. Then the perfect solution hit me.

"I would like to invite my late father, Harry, and my two children, Christopher and Alison, who never knew their paternal grandfather. He died even before I met their mother. It should be Christmas dinner at home which Lois, my wife, will cook."

The arrangements settled, as he faded before my eyes, Gelna called hurriedly, "I almost forgot. There is a price to be paid. In the next few days you will get a call from the Salvation Army asking you to play Santa Claus at their kids Christmas parties, so don't have a haircut or trim your beard."

I must say that, after four of these performances, I'm sick of snotty nosed kids sitting on my knee and pulling my beard to check that it's real. I hope dinner with Dad and my kids ends up being worth the effort.