The story of a man who decides never to get out of bed again and the ripple effects that follow. A young man awakening to his sense of entitlement. Two couples grappling with desire and frustration. A man quietly watching topless women by the pool from his hotel room. A boy staging a Christmas play in the hope of receiving a kiss. These eight short stories form a collection that is, by turns, amusing and poignant, and which always touches on something deeply human. I found it a thoroughly enjoyable read \u2014 subtle, insightful and often unexpectedly funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“But I digress. Back to the Nativity play, The Story of Christmas, as it was rather unimaginatively entitled. I wanted to call it The Fruit of the Womb, but the parish priest, Father Stanislaus Lynch, wouldn\u2019t have it \u2013 the first of many battles we had over the play. He said my title was indecent. I pointed out that it was a quotation from the Hail Mary: \u2018and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.\u2019 He said that, taken out of context, the words had a different effect. I said: \u2018What you mean is that in context they have no effect at all, because Catholics recite prayers in a mindless drone, without paying any attention to what they\u2019re saying. My play is designed to shock them out of their mental torpor, into a new awareness of what Christmas is all about \u2013 Incarnation.\u2019 I was a fluent and arrogant youth \u2013 at least in intellectual debate. In other areas of life, such as girls, I was less assured.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Contents<\/strong> The story of a man who decides never to get out of bed again and the ripple effects that follow. A young man awakening to his sense of entitlement. Two couples grappling with desire and frustration. A man quietly watching topless women by the pool from his hotel room. A boy staging a Christmas play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[291,293,294],"tags":[172,133,47],"class_list":["post-21330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2026","category-challenge-riquiqui-2026","category-challenge-solidaire-2026","tag-couple","tag-derision","tag-humour"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/zetong-li-rbFxv8GUEt4-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C2560&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21330"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21341,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21330\/revisions\/21341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Man Who Woudn’t Get Up \/ The Miser \/ My First Job \/ Where the Climate’s Sultry \/ Hotel de Boobs \/ Pastoral \/ A Wedding to Remember \/ My Last Missis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"