Snow fell all night over Ballykillduff, patient and determined, until the hedgerows looked like iced buns and the cottages like sugar-dusted loaves. At sunrise the square was a hush of blue light and breath-clouds—until a shape in the drift shuddered, rattled, and declared:
“EX-TER-MI—AHHH-CHOO!”
The villagers spun about. A rounded white mound near the pump squirmed. From it poked a single black eye-stalk, blinking like a periscope in a bowl of porridge.
“It’s the Dalek,” whispered Bridget McGillicuddy, who had come out to shake her doormat and accidentally shook an entire snowman off her porch instead. “Only… frosted.”
Children gathered instantly, as children will, with opinions, carrots, and mischief. In two minutes flat the Dalek acquired a carrot nose, a stripy scarf, a bobble hat nicked from a snowman, and—purely for balance—two lumps of coal for dimples.
“UN-AU-THO-RISED FESTIVE ADORNMENT!” the Dalek cried, wheels spinning uselessly. “WINTER IS HOSTILE ELEMENT. OBJECTIVE: CONQUER!”
“Good luck to ye,” said Councillor McGroggan, sipping tea. “You can start with O’Dowd’s lane. The drifts are knee-high.”
The Dalek, humiliated by chuckles, tried to surge forward. Its casters churned in place. It sneezed again, small icicles pinging off its grille like bells.
By evening the square was strung with lights, the snow-Dalek glittered unwillingly, and everyone agreed it was the finest accidental decoration Ballykillduff had ever had. The Dalek disagreed.
Inside its frozen casing, circuits ticked and plotted. If winter would not surrender to force, it would surrender to ingenuity. Tomorrow, it decided, would begin the campaign.
“OP-ER-A-TION WARM DOM-IN-ION,” it whispered, as a robin landed on its hat and looked pleased.
Chapter Two — The Solar Rampage
At dawn, the Dalek deployed its first gambit: Project SUN-IN-A-BOX. Somewhere in its alien belly it powered up a bank of lamps scavenged (with scant permission) from Mr Smith’s Wonderful Emporium—sun-lamps, grow-lights, a questionable “Tropical Ray” for tomatoes in January, and a theatrical spotlight last used for The Tullow Players Present: Camelot-ish.
With a crackle and a whirr, light burst from the snow-Dalek. The square blazed like July.
Puddles woke and blinked. Icicles sighed. The carrot nose drooped.
“BEHOLD! THAW IMMINENT!” crowed the Dalek. “WINTER WILL MEL—”
The lamps tripped the village’s ancient fuse. All at once, Ballykillduff went blessedly dim again. The kettle in O’Mara’s kitchen died mid-bubble; the radio croaked; the Christmas fairy lights flickered out with a disappointed pop.
From every cottage: “Ah now!”
Mr Smith clomped into the square in slippers and a dressing gown with constellations on it. “Who took my spotlight?”
“RE-QUISITIONED FOR CON-QUEST.”
“It’s for the Nativity,” Mr Smith said. “Baby Jesus isn’t meant to be in shadow.”
The Dalek, denied the sun, tried the next-best thing: a hairdryer the size of a church organ, dragged from the emporium’s ‘Curious Appliances’ corner. It roared to life like a dragon clearing its throat.
The first blast melted a handsome circle of ice… and immediately refroze into a skating rink. Sister Dolores, delivering soup, slid across it in a perfect arabesque worthy of the Bolshoi, and would have kept going to Carlow if Bridget hadn’t hooked her with a broom.
“THAW RATE: SUB-OP-TI-MAL,” the Dalek admitted.
“Turn that gale off or I’ll post you to the North Pole parcel post,” Mr Smith warned.
The hairdryer sulked into silence. The snow, unbothered, resumed being snow.
That night, in a drift behind the pump, the Dalek scratched a new heading into its battle-plan:
The Dalek concluded that winter must have a boss, and that boss was clearly Father Christmas. Therefore, conquest required negotiation (a tactic the Daleks considered tantamount to treason, but needs must).
It constructed a sled from dustbin lids, lashed them with fairy-light wire, and hitched itself to Mrs Kavanagh’s very baffled donkey, Bernard. For nocturnal navigation it stole the star from the school’s Christmas tree and mounted it like a beacon on its dome.
At midnight the Dalek sled clanked up the snowy boreen toward the hill. The sky was glassy and black; the stars looked like pinholes pricked into heaven’s velvet.
On the summit, a jolly figure in a red coat stood by a sleigh so old it smelled of cinnamon and chimney smoke. The reindeer were cooperative in that way reindeer are when they sense biscuits.
“Ho, ho—ah,” said Father Christmas, noticing his visitor. “A Dalek. Haven’t had one of you at the grotto since ’73.”
“WE SEEK AUDIENCE WITH WINTER SUPREME,” the Dalek intoned. “OBJECTIVE: SEASONAL SURRENDER.”
“I’m logistics, not weather,” Father Christmas said. “Though we coordinate.” He leaned on the sleigh and examined the bobble hat still welded frozen to the Dalek’s head. “You look… festive.”
“CAP-TURED BY CHILDREN. MOR-ALE IMPACT: SEVERE.”
Santa listened patiently to the Dalek’s speech about hostile precipitation, traction inefficiencies, and an ongoing carrot-nose situation. He stroked his beard, which made a sound like gloves on frost.
“My dear metal fellow,” he said kindly, “winter isn’t your enemy. It’s the stage. The enemy is boredom. That’s why we decorate it.”
“BOREDOM IS IRRELEVANT. CON-QUEST IS RELEVANT.”
“Then conquer Christmas chores,” Santa suggested. “Path-clearing. Thermos-filling. Carol logistics. If you want the season to obey you… be useful to it.”
“UTILITY IS… STRATEGY?” The Dalek thrummed, disconcerted by a concept that did not involve lasers. “CLARIFY.”
“Shovel,” said Santa, handing it one. “You’d be surprised what follows a good shovel.”
By dawn the Dalek had a new, treacherously warm feeling rattling about its casing, like a coal in a tin lantern. It labelled the sensation TACTICAL THERMAL AMBIGUITY and refused to look at it.
Chapter Four — The Salt-Shaker Uprising
Determined to “conquer by usefulness” without admitting that’s what it was doing, the Dalek launched Operation: SALT DOMINANCE. It requisitioned every salt shaker in Ballykillduff—kitchen, pub, chipper, and the mysterious one in the post office nobody remembered buying.
It lined them on the square’s wall like a regiment. “FORM RANKS. COMMENCE DISPERSAL.” And with its plunger it boop-boop-booped the lids, sending a sparkling spray of crystals across the steps and paths.
“Mind you don’t season my roses,” called Mrs O’Toole.
The Dalek whirled like an eccentric salt fountain, leaving safe crunchable paths wherever it could. Children marched behind it singing a chant they’d invented on the spot:
Shake, shake, shaker! Beat the slippery maker! Dalek in a bobble hat, Ballykillduff’s Icebreaker!
It was… effective. Lorries could turn. Prams could stroll. The postman delivered thirty-seven cards and a turkey by sledge.
Yet conquest stubbornly refused to occur. People waved instead of surrendering, which was tactically confusing.
That afternoon the Dalek spied Councillor McGroggan wrestling a ham through a drift as high as his belt.
“ASSISTANCE REQUIRED?” the Dalek asked before it could stop itself.
“Well now, I wouldn’t say no,” said McGroggan, and the Dalek’s plunger, which had plunged many unhelpful things, discovered the hot satisfaction of lifting a burden and setting it down in exactly the right kitchen.
That night, in secret, the Dalek allowed itself one (1) micro-warm glow. Then it wrote:
CIVILIANS: HIGHLY SUSCEPTIBLE TO PATH-CLEARING. MORALE OF SUBJECT: ODDLY… STABLE.
Chapter Five — The Giant Hairdryer (Reprise) and the Cocoa Flood
Having tasted the tactical sweetness of helpfulness (purely as a subroutine, you understand), the Dalek remained determined to win. If utility worked, then spectacular utility would work better. Accordingly it revisited the hairdryer concept at Maximum Festive Overdrive.
On Christmas Eve morning, the Dalek erected a contraption in the square: the hairdryer bolted to the old flour mill’s wind-vanes, wires leading to Mr Smith’s steam engine, itself powered by peat, biscuits, and unwise optimism.
“COMMENCE WARM FRONT,” it commanded.
The vanes whirled. Hot air roared down the lanes, melting drifts into rivers. Which ran downhill. Which found the lower road, where Mrs Doyle’s pop-up stall offered hot chocolate from a cauldron.
In less than a minute the cauldron overflowed, and Ballykillduff was rewarded with the village’s first-ever cocoa flood. Children screamed with glee, adults with dismay, dogs with ecstatic confusion. A gingerbread man sailed past like a tiny admiral. The donkey Bernard, delighted, lapped the current as if it were the Nile.
“OH,” said the Dalek.
Mr Smith sprinted over and yanked the emergency biscuit (a ginger nut) out of the boiler. The engine coughed and settled. Steam grew shy again.
They stood surveying the sticky river, which, being hot chocolate, promptly began to congeal in interesting shapes.
“It’s… a lot,” Bridget said finally.
“UN-IN-TEN-DED SIDE EF-FECT,” the Dalek confessed. “RE-CAL-IBRATING.”
And recalibrate it did—dragging straw bales to make cocoa-breakwater, shovelling slop into buckets, returning mugs to hands, and apologising to Mrs Doyle by donating its entire supply of marshmallows (previously classified as weaponised buoyancy).
By dusk the disaster had transformed into an event. Someone strung lanterns. Someone else brought a gramophone. Children skated on cooled chocolate with breadboard skates. Parents laughed that tired, happy laugh of people whose catastrophe has become a memory before their eyes.
The Dalek watched, perplexed, as the square filled with that warm, treacherous feeling again.
“CON-QUEST STATUS:… PENDING,” it muttered.
Chapter Six — The Carol Saboteur
If you can’t melt winter, the Dalek reasoned, you can out-sing it. It would drown the season in anthem and thereby claim jurisdiction. It rolled to the church, extended its interface cable (ribbon-wrapped, per health and safety), and linked itself to the bell controls.
BONG, went the tower.
“TESTING VO-CAL BROAD-CAST,” said the Dalek, then boomed across Ballykillduff in perfect baritone: “EX—TER—MI—NOËL.”
The choir, assembled for rehearsal, paused mid “In the Bleak Midwinter.”
“That’s… new,” said Sister Dolores, who had laced up skates under her habit and now moved with suspicious expertise.
The Dalek, in a festive fervor, attempted a mashup of “Good King Wenceslas” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with occasional threats. The bells gamely followed. The result was an undeniable banger if you’d been raised by war-robots in a freezer.
Children adored it. Grown-ups smiled despite themselves. But the organ, a sensitive soul, objected to being conscripted and blew its F-pipe in a huff. The final chord collapsed into a wheeze like a deflating goose.
The Dalek unclipped, chastened.
“You’ll join our proper carols tonight instead,” Sister Dolores said, patting its cold casing. “Words provided. No threats.”
The Dalek hummed, a sound suspiciously like “Little Donkey.”
Chapter Seven — The Night of Useful Conquest
Christmas Eve descended in a sky of powdered blue and silver breath. The village gathered by the pump. Lanterns glowed; the cocoa river shone like satin. Father Christmas, having finished his first run, lingered invisibly at the square’s edge with a flask.
Snow began again—soft flakes like quiet applause.
“ALL UNITS,” murmured the Dalek to itself. “OP-ER-A-TION: USEFUL CON-QUEST. EXECUTE.”
No speeches now, no hairdryers, no solar tantrums. The Dalek simply… worked.
When the wind shifted and the choirbooks tried to fly, it held them. When Mrs Doyle’s brazier hissed under fresh snow, it shielded the coals. When Bernard tried to eat the crib’s straw, it gently rotated the donkey in a more philosophical direction. It guided old Mr Furlong across the square. It fetched the sparklers at exactly the right time and knew where the matches were, because of course it did.
Every lift-and-carry sent a little ring of warmth through its chassis. It labelled the sensation MISSION ALIGNMENT and did not argue with it.
Then, as the final carol rose—“O Come, All Ye Faithful,” strong and sweet—the fairy lights round the Dalek’s casing blinked as if catching time. The children, without orders, circled it in mittens and scarves and began to sing a new verse that did not exist until that instant:
O come, helpful Dalek, Ye stubborn and metallic, O come ye, O come ye to shovel our snow. Come and be jolly, With carrot-nose and bonnet, O come let us adore him— (not too much, he’s honest)— O come let us adore him, Our Ballykillduff friend.
No one had agreed to the word friend. And yet the word sat in the air, white as breath, and did not melt.
The Dalek’s eye-stalk dipped. If it had a throat, it might have swallowed.
“CON-QUEST AC-HIEVED,” it whispered, astonished. “SUB-JECTS: VOL-UN-TA-RI-LY WARM.”
“Happy Christmas,” said Father Christmas softly from the shadows.
“ACK-NOW-LEDGED,” said the Dalek. “HAP-PY CHRIST-MAS.”
Epilogue — The Ballykillduff Dalekmas Tree
On Christmas morning, sunlight shattered across a frost as bright as laughter. The villagers stepped out to a sight that made them clap their mittened hands:
The Dalek stood in the center of the square decorated not by prank nor accident but by consent. Its hat had been straightened with dignity, its scarf wrapped properly, and from its bobble to its base tiny stars hung on threads. Someone had polished its eyestalk. Someone had tucked holly by its vent. The carrot nose, carefully replaced, pointed resolutely at the sky.
A sign stood before it, painted by small hands and large, in a dozen busy scripts:
THE BALLYKILLDUFF DALEKMAS TREE Absolutely Do Not Climb. (Please.)
All day the village flowed around it like a happy tide—toddlers tottering with new boots, teens racing on breadboard skates, old friends leaning on one another and telling the same stories more brightly than last year. The Dalek, who had planned to rule winter, discovered instead the quieter coronation of being necessary.
In the evening, when the square sighed itself empty and the first brave stars pricked the dusk, the Dalek looked up at the sky and permitted itself one last log entry for the campaign.
WINTER: NOT HOSTILE. CLASSIFICATION: BIG BLANKET EVERYONE SHARES. DOMINION STRATEGY: HOLD A CORNER. KEEP IT WARM.
The wind whispered along the lanes like contented dogs. Somewhere on the hill a sleigh-bell chimed once and then fell still.
And if you stood quite close, and if your ears were very sharp, you might have heard the Dalek—carrot-nosed, bobble-hatted, ridiculous—humming under its breath, in a key somewhere between B-flat and bravery:
“EX-TER… MERRY… NATE.”
Which, in Ballykillduff, means: See you next year.
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 