Christmas Away

My husband and I have a very good record

of always getting deployed over Christmas,

and I'm quite close to my family,

and Stu's always been very welcome

and really likes, again,

that military ethos within the family.

So he sent a present.

But before he sent the present,

he said, "I'm going to be there,

"I'm going to surprise you on Christmas Day."

and I was expecting him to come back early from deployment

and arrive in a helicopter.

But there were a couple of things,

so Stewart's sort of humor within this.

So I was brought up in a house

where there was no tomato ketchup and no HP sauce

'cause it is the devil's food.

I'm married to a man who's addicted to HP sauce,

as every other person

from Northern Ireland I've ever met is.

They all love it.

And mum wouldn't have it in the house.

So that Christmas, it said open me first.

So there was sort of a bumper sized version of HP sauce

for mum's Christmas present, so--

That was my present.

And it was sort of then, open me second.

It was this huge parcel.

It was a huge parcel,

and it was addressed to the whole family.

And he, I don't know what he'd been doing on deployment,

but effectively what it was was a huge life-sized

jigsaw puzzle put together, Stewart.

So that Christmas he was in all of the photos

in a really sort of cheesy pose,

in his desert combat kit.

And he then phoned us I think later in the day

and we were all over the moon

because it was original, it was funny,

and it's quite touching that that was

how he was gonna be part of our Christmas.

But he didn't arrive by helicopter.

No, no sadly not.