[Growster...]

We haven't had one of these for a while so here goes...

It was Christmas night in the workhouse, and young Silas Growster sat at the scrubbed deal table, moodily pushing a wooden spoon around in his bowl of gruel.

'%%% this for a game of soldiers', he muttered and began to...

[snowdrops]

Get out the ingredients, for what he hoped would be a rather potent tincture. First to go in was........

[New shoot]

...a good shot of a brew he had made from the surplus tomatoes he had grown over the summer. 

Despite numerous warnings from Mrs G, he had snuck extra plants in around the workhouse and ended up in a pact with various other rascals to set up an illicit still behind the workhouse shed.  It was a good start, but it lacked a little something-something.

Silas Growster sat musing. 'Hmmmm what this needs is ....

[Debz]

something warming to keep the cold out so he went for a rummage in the workhouse freezer to see what kinds of chilli's might lurk in there that he could grind down and add to the brew.  He managed to find.........

[Growster...]

...some sort of recipe for tincturised chilli cabbage wine, which was a version of a more - late - Growster (Norbert Growster), had defined several years before, and consigned to a parchment document for...

[New shoot]

...future tincture historians to pore over.  Unfortunately Norbert had been an enthusiastic sampler and the parchment was not easy to read.

Silas Growster leaned closer to the candle to make out the scrawling writing, but as he did...

[Growster...]

...the silly tassel thing on the funny hat that blokes had to wear in bed in Dickensian times, fell forward into the guttering flame and...

[Debz]

set alight the fine set of whiskers he had been cultivating in a nod to the topiary in big house that the local gentry lived in.  With no thought to his personal modesty, he leaped out of bed and.....

[Goosegirl]

… accidentally caught his foot on the handle of the rather full gazunda hiding underneath the candlewick bedspread and fell onto the floor. "Now that's really annoyed me" he said (or words of a similar but more explicit nature) and was just about to throw his tantrum out of the window until he remembered how long it took him to renovate and tune it to the Saxon modal DAGDAD, so he rose unsteadily onto his feet, trimmed his wick, grabbed the piece of parchment and a goose quill then began to make a spreadsheet of said freezer contents until he was interrupted by ...

[mrs bouquet]

His Mother,  a poor woman of humble means.   (Wasn't she lucky to have a freezer though)    She looked at what her Son had done and what he was now doing.    The spreadsheet was minimal as the freezer mostly contained gruel.   Don't you think you can curry favours with me young man, she bellowed, then the door opened and.....

[snowdrops]

In walked a vision of loveliness that was......

[New shoot]

... a ghostly walking cocktail glass with a luscious looking but faintly glowing tincture inside.  Silas cowered, but then rallied and said 'Bah humbug.  There is more Grenadine than grave about you'.

The spirit cocktail glass stopped and uttered the immortal words 'Oh I am real Silas and I come to...

[snowdrops]

Tell you it is time to ..........

[mrs bouquet]

throw your gruel away and throw caution to the wind.  Let me spirit you away, lets go and see what is behind the door at the big house.   They went in and he was amazed.   There were ....               

[rowlandwells]

a host of scantly dressed waitresses serving all Christmas goodies plenty to eat and drink and there he is Father Christmas and he said what would you like in your Christmas stocking this year whisper it in my ear