A CHEERY GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMASTIDE

Somewhere that I'd driven past a thousand times but never entered. Reassuringly there, without the need for any thought or analysis: The George, a roadhouse outside Andover on the way to Salisbury.

Who's ever written about it? But whenever I saw the place, I'd imagine an evening's drinking. Entering without expectation and slouching into some 1930s tiled corner - unseen, seen or even scrutinised - it wouldn't make any difference.

This Christmas, I pulled over. My Jag seemed perfect for the pub and I'd not driven past since acquiring it.

And how my country has now vanished! What one always thought was bedrock - igneous, metamorphic, Jurassic, whatever - isn't even sandstone, just playground stuff which runs through your fingers.

The area is military. Dunkirk then D-Day troops once drank in The George. No nostalgia from me though; I've even given up watching Remembrance Sunday. Whatever their sacrifices, we've been invaded via invitation.

The place was full of ghosts; at Christmas everywhere now is. Except not figures from my past nor ones many young people would recognise. Maybe they'd know the column but who can see him on top? He was drinking Spanish lager in the corner, unmistakable with his hat, eye patch and wild hair. Ignored by the Polish bar staff let alone the public-sector office crowd in paper crowns, unleashing party poppers. Horatio was muttering to himself, one eye focused on a crumpled document:

I am a friend of Peace without fearing War; for my politics are to let France know that we will give no insult to her Government, nor will we receive the smallest. If France takes unfair means to prevent our trading with other Powers, under her influence, this I consider the greatest act of hostility she can show us.

Stirring words, as I told him without reservation.

'I sent it to Theresa May's government when she was surrendering all that I fought and died for.'

'Did she reply?'

'I got a postcard of wheat fields, some Waitrose vouchers and an application form for Disability Living Allowance.'

'What are you even doing here?'

He switched his eye patch so I was met with the blank socket, looking wrinkled and soft to touch. Before I could stop myself, I'd reached out and confirmed this.

'I'm in the area to go riding with Emma Hamilton, on Porton Down.'

At last, a link to myself! I'd been told how the couple would meet on that bare scrubland - almost savannah like - around the road to Porton. My father had been a director of the microbiological lab there, and his father had headed wartime research on gas attacks, at field stations in the wild grassland.

The door slammed open with that deafening crash, heard in pubs throughout the land when Christmas drunks enter.

Of course it was Sir Winston Churchill, completely bladdered, propped up by a squinting Rudyard Kipling. He chucked a box of his namesake mince pies at the office party group, landing on their table apparently out of thin air, glasses flying. The looping trajectory suggested only I could have thrown it.

'What's his fucking problem?' a huge Shireman hollered, advancing with fists ready to deliver a steam hammering on my puny frame.

Churchill had one Doc Marten back-lifted, about to crush this oaf's testicles. But my invisible protector wasn't needed. An enormous middle-aged woman, lanyard dangling, directed 'Geoff from Maintenance' back to their table then turned on me.

'I think it's time you left. We'd all prefer it if you went home then reflected on your actions.'

I'd rather have a steam-hammering than hear this management speak. To my delight, Kipling was also apoplectic from the horror of his beloved language being mangled and tortured. Although a reasonably short man, he was built like a bull. Ominously he slipped off his spectacles and handed them to Sir Winston.

An unseen whirlwind enveloped the table of these Yuletide revellers. I was remined of some jinni in one of his Plain Tales from the Hills.

'Even Joseph Conrad would struggle to describe that,' quipped Gigger, as all four of us stared in wonder at the devastation visited on the HR department from some Local Authority office.

As a child, if humiliated I'd relive in my head that scene from A Fistful of Dollars, when his mule demands retribution on bandits and Clint Eastwood slaughters them all. I left The George elated, although aware that my victory was likely to be temporary. Sure enough, I heard Old Bill's sirens approaching. Urged on by my three jubilant companions, I stepped in front of a thatch-headed Hampshire plod.

'I've had my Islamic faith insulted with pork scratchings chucked all over my meal-deal Hunter's chicken.'

He informed me how I'd suffered a hate crime and urged that I pressed charges. As I completed the paper work, I saw several of the less critically injured being frog-marched into a riot van. Ambulances then arrived to remove the more serious cases.

I fired up the Jaguar and thanked a lone evening star for the Ghosts of Christmas Past, somewhere looking over us still - if we dare to ask.