A Gift from Bob: How a Street Cat Helped One Man Learn the Meaning of Christmas by James Bowen

Author:James Bowen [Bowen, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2014-10-09T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Smiley Faces

The Arctic weather was making all the news again. When I flicked the television on the next morning, the breakfast bulletin was claiming it was the coldest winter in exactly a century, since 1910. The programme was full of dramatic stories of people’s troubles in the past twenty-four hours. Cars and lorries had been trapped in giant snowdrifts, flights had been cancelled, shopping centres and motorways were being forced to close. According to one bulletin from Heathrow, there had been fist fights as distraught travellers realised they were stranded in London, possibly over the Christmas holiday. Someone called it the Christmas from hell. A day ago, I could have related to that. Yesterday, however, had been a heavenly release from my worries.

I wasn’t entirely out of the woods. I wanted to get Belle and Bob some half-decent presents and needed a little bit of spare cash to cover contingencies during the holiday. I also wanted to top up my phone so that I could try to call my dad on Christmas Day. Most of all, however, I wanted to get to Angel today. I had something I needed to do.

I gave Bob his breakfast and made myself a bowl of hot cereal.

‘Central heating for kids, the adverts call it. Let’s see if it works for thirty-one-year-old kids, shall we, Bob?’ I said, as I spooned the bowl down.

The television was still broadcasting weather news. When one of the meteorologists began predicting even more atrocious weather with lots of temperatures below minus ten degrees centigrade later this week, I decided I’d heard enough.

‘Let’s go, Bob. The sooner we get out there, the sooner we get home again.’

The landscape was still as white as it had been yesterday, but at least London seemed to be moving again. The roads had been cleared pretty well so the bus journey was a million times better than the previous day.

When we got to Angel, I laid out our pitch as normal, with one exception. I had four boxes of Christmas cards with me. I had spent the previous night writing messages in about half of them. I’d gone to bed with a sore arm to go with my sore backside. The rest remained blank, although it didn’t take long for that to change.

As had happened yesterday, a lot of people reacted to us as if they were being reunited with long-lost relatives.

‘Ah, that’s cheered me up seeing you two back,’ said one regular, a young girl called Bernadette who worked in some offices not far from the Tube station.

As she kneeled down to stroke Bob, I took a blank card out of one of the boxes and started scribbling:

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