6 December 2004
Santa, Baby
The scene: Smuckhams department store, December. A female laden with shopping bags bustles into a small office, and rings a bell. From behind the desk pops up a young suited man. He is of the greasier specimens of the retail family.She: I wish to register a complaint.
He: Right. I'll fetch the fire extinguisher.
She: What?
He: Oh, is it not the perfume department? Sorry. Force of habit. Nylon carpets, static, parfum dousings, hair, it's an everyday forgetIsaidanything what seems to be the matter, madam?
She: The lewd, lascivious and frankly bizzare behaviour of one of your shop stewards, sir, the ambush and verbal fondling of myself and countless knows how many other moral innocents, sir, THAT is what seems to be the matter.
He: Gosh. I'll just get a pen. Right. Where did this occur, exactly?
She: In your lobby. I was just admiring your festive shrubbery, when a very small man ushered me into a dark, sweatlined, warm hole, saying he had something he would like to show me. I followed him, having a natural trust of little people, and thinking it must be some form of bargain basement. Suddenly, I was all alone. Or so I thought. A deep, booming, dirty laugh boomed out of the darkness, and in a specially crafted revolving filth-chair, your employee appeared, patting his lower body, suggestively.
He: erm. It sounds rather like...
She: There is more, I fear! Put not that pen down, sir! When I didn't comply with his tacit gesture, he openly asked me to 'sit on' him. I didn't move - he tried another tack, saying that he felt like 'giving something' to me, that he had a feeling that I was 'very good', and that he had 'something in his sack' that he thought I'd like 'to play with'.
He: ...
She: Yes! I also, good sir, was speechless, as you can well imagine. And yet - this was not the end of the debacle, no! The misfit seemed to be proposing some further exchange - that he 'knows where I live', and 'knows what I want', no less - and that he would be 'coming down my chimney' at some point later this month. His aforementinoned mucky mantra was repeated. He wanted to know whether I was 'as good as' he'd 'heard' I was, before deciding whether he'd 'give it to' me or not. I said that I wasn't 'very good' at all. And he offered me something 'to suck on' while I though about how I could be 'better'. I have, sir, only this lollipop to prove my dreadful adventure. On it, you will find my DNA, along with, as you can see, the white beard hair and blood of the deviant.
He: Blood?!
She: But of course. I couldn't not stand such a proposed assault on my lady-garden, sir.
He: Good God! You've killed Father Christmas!
She: Father Chr....? A Priest! I should have known it.
He: Father Christmas. Saint Nick. Santa Claus?
She: ...
He: An innocent figure of a man. Years told, much loved. You know - the lovely seasonal story of a stranger sneaking into your house in the middle of the night, I mean, no, what I mean is that age-old figure of a man, sitting in judgement over children, asking them to act as he bids them to so as not to incite his disapproval, no, he wants them to be good, so that he can give them...
She: This is scandalous!
He: Children love this!
She: I don't love this, and I'm eight.
He: Ooh, you liar!
She: Oh alright. That's not the point right now. I just don't get it.
He: Listen. Parents tell their children that this man will give them presents, dependent on their good behaviour. The children write a list of all the things they want for Christmas, and, after Father Christmas has - by tradition -flown down the flue, they duly find all the goods they remember ordering all present and correct on Christmas morning.
She: Why would any parent tell their child that their gifts came from some unmet third party that seemed to demand an undue moral hold over their childhood and yet slavishly produced every item the child requested?
He: ... erm. ...
She: I believe he also called me a 'Ho'. Several times.
He: I give in! It's a lie. Here you go - there IS NO FATHER CHRISTMAS. Alright?
She: No, well of course there isn't. He's laid out yonder with boiled-sweet bruising on his bonce. Is there a reward?
He: A... ? Reward. Right. Erm. Hang on, let me just have a rummage in my drawers... No! Not the lollipop!...
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