Christmas Card 18 - Howlin' Wolf

He growled into town in his Jag - expensive overcoat, big cigar, the works - and set about rounding up the local sheep. He had a deal. A deal that no-one would be able to resist. And if some of the old sheep's eyes weren't up to reading small print, well, that wasn't a problem for him. The deal was complicated but it involved a small, exclusive housing development. There was an eco-house built around bales of straw - lots of grants and complicated economics around for eco-houses in these green times - and a state-of-the-art wooden Kithaus from Germany. The third house was an Olde-Worlde Tudorbethan Manor House in dark, red brick.

The finances were beyond complicated and some of the woolly-minded investors pronounced themselves completely baffled but he just smiled, wolfishly, and reminded them that he was investing in the scheme himself - it was that good a deal. And so the deal went through and the houses were built, and written up in the specialist press, and sold. The houses and the profit were all handsome.

But when it came to dividing up the Adonis-like profit, things didn't add up. The tangled finances, once unraveled, seemed to mean that some investors had, indeed, made a profits that could have been matinee idols. But others had nothing. He wasn't surprised by this. He had even suspected something along these lines. But the surprising thing was that HE had ended-up empty-pawed whilst the sheep had all done rather well, thank-you very much!

He huffed and puffed but, in the end, had to admit that he had been fleeced.



Christmas cards - bought in last year's January sales. Prudently.