Click to play SANTA'S CHRISTMAS SNOWSTORM
Read by Sarah Feathers
It was going to be my first Christmas in London. Far away from home and the family – and I was so excited. Back home, as the tradition of seasonal bickering between relatives kicked in, I’d try and hide in my old room with a glass of wine for company. But I’d always end up being located by my tipsy mother who’d interrogate me with her “friendly questions” about boyfriends and friends of mine who already had families.
It didn’t bother me that all my London friends were heading home to all their own personal variants of Family Hell. I was genuinely looking forward to a quiet one. Christmas Eve would be me, the telly and expensive booze.
Of course, when the evening came I was bored beyond belief by half nine. The hot new US TV boxset everyone insisted I watch turned out to be a load of hot new US bollocks. And the fine wine no more than shite wine. The mood was ruined. I blew out the candles, turned on the main light and sat bored in the brightness.
Then I thought about what I had in my bedroom. The treat I had prepared myself for New Year’s. A small amount of coke. Not much. Just enough to get me buzzing, but not enough to turn me into a total wanker.
Of course, once I had thought of it – I couldn’t un-think it. I stared at the pile of books I had always meant to read. I flicked through the TV channels to find the least shite Christmas Special worth seeing but deep down I had already decided.
There was a small alcove in my bedroom where there had clearly once been a fireplace and on cold days I cursed the fact that I couldn’t burn stolen office stationary to heat the flat. Instead now it housed a small cupboard where I kept all the things I could never talk about with my mother. My cabinet of Mumentionables.
In silence, I prepared me a small line of coke. Just enough to stave off boredom. It didn’t mean I had a problem. In the cold Christmas Eve silence, I paused briefly.
Then a jolly voice boomed through the quiet.
“What have you got there Little Girl?”
I jumped and spun round. Standing there, in the middle of my room was Santa.
“Child, I am sick to the fucking back teeth of mince pies and sherry. You couldn’t let me just…”
And before I could say anything, the greedy fuck hoovered up all the cocaine in one enormous jolly snort.
“Ho! Ho! Ho! – that hit the spot” Santa threw his head back and shook his big white beard. “Now, little lady, what can I get you for Christmas?”
I was going to sarcastically ask for my coke back, but before I could get annoyed I saw his big Christmassy face beaming happily – and all the resentment seemed to flow out my body.
“Tell you what”, he boomed, “I know what all good children want as a gift” And he shook his white beard again and a cloud of sparkles filled the room. Next thing I knew I was sitting on Santa’s sleigh outside in the cold, six floors above the ground floating outside my own bedroom window.
“Boys!” Santa chortled to a couple of elves sitting at the back of the sleigh, “Best behaviour. There’s a Lady present.”
One elf looked up angrily “May I remind you,” he whined “that according to my projected work/time analysis data you are currently running 4% behind schedule, and the extra weight – apologies ma’am – is only going to make the situation worse.”
Santa just laughed and looked at me. “Balls to all that!” he roared, “Where do you want to go?”
I tried to match the beam in his smile as I grinned back, “Santa, can I bring my friend Vicky?”
Vicky was one of my best friends from university who’d got to London a few years before me but by the time I’d been able to follow she’d had twins and moved out to the suburbs. This meant we never got to see each other enough. But thanks to the magic of Santa’s sleigh we were hovering outside her house before I’d even finished the request.
Through her living room window I could see her looking exhausted and idly killing time on Youtube. I gently tapped the glass, and when she came over I could see her peering quizzically into the night.
“It’s only fucking Santa,” I mouthed through the window, thumbpointing at the big man behind me.
She opened the window. “What the …”
“Fancy a flight?” I smiled.
She quietly looked back into the house. “Hang on, I’ve put the kids to bed…”
“Not with the kids,” I asked, “just us. Come on. I promise the flight will be quick.”
Vicky looked tempted but anxious – but Santa boomed his way into the conversation. “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen to them on Christmas Eve. But just in case…”
And then Santa gave the whining elf a massive kick up the arse, sending him flying through the open window. He winked at the two of us “I know he seemed like an elf with a Christmas tree stuffed up his arse, but he’s actually pretty good with kids.”
The old man was pretty fucking high by now, and he seemed to fly his sleigh recklessly round London, narrowly we missed several of the world’s greatest landmarks. Suddenly he shouted “What we need is some music!” and reached into one of the sacks at the back of the sleigh. He dug out a parcel addressed to some poor kid in Guildford called Josh, tore of the wrapping paper to reveal a set of speakers. Through these he began playing a classical music piece at the highest possible volume.
“Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kilje!” he cheered, “This tune fucking owns Christmas” And with that he began singing along to all the instrumentation then hollering loud “Ho Yeahs!” into the night sky whenever the music surged.
After the eighteenth listen, we tried to get Santa to play something more recent. Little Anna Creedy of Streatham was getting a Now That’s What I Call Christmas! album which we “borrowed”, but Saint Nick just wasn’t interested. He listened to just a couple of seconds from every track before shouting “Shite!” and skipping to the next one. And this seemed to make him fly the sleigh even faster. I felt Vicky grab my arm, “Oh Jesus,” she gasped, “He’s going to get us killed. On Christmas Eve.”
Bizarrely East17’s “Stay Another Day” seemed to strike a chord, and calm him down. This one he played in full progressively slowing the sleigh as the song went along. Eventually we came to a complete stop at the very top of the Shard. “Now this” he laughed, “this is my favourite new building on the planet”. And then he pissed down the side of it.
London looked amazing from the top of the Shard. The lights of the stars shone bewitchingly while beautiful dark pink clouds moved sedately across the sky, glowing with the potential for Christmas Day snow. But beneath them, the many tacky festive lights of London seemed to somehow outdazzle the stars. And nearly every house, every flat in London seemed full of the promise the day seemed to hold when I was little. It was impossible to be cynical here, to challenge the potential wonder of the day despite the evidence of so many previous disappointments.
“Bloody Marvellous isn’t it,” Santa sigh wistfully. “This is how it should be. It’s not felt like this for too long now. Not since I fucked it all up.”
And then I became aware that the big man was quietly crying. I turned to see Vicky touch him on the arm and gently ask “What happened Santa?”
“Years back,” he sniffed, “I fell in with the wrong people. A large corporate Hedge Fund with a glossy portfolio on how to maximise Christmas. I foolishly sold most of the rights to the holiday to these people. That’s why the day is so shit now. The bellends took the whole thing over, gave me the title of Central Gift Distribution Executive Officer, and it’s never been the same since.”
I looked at Vicky, and she looked at me. We both felt that surge of exciting rebellion, like when you’re young and you sneak an early look at your Christmas presents.
“But Santa,” Vicky continued reassuringly, “look at everything you’ve got. All the magic at your disposal. You don’t have to put up with anything.”
He sighed, “Well, I did sign certain contracts…”
“Fuck the cunting contracts!” I yelled. “You’re fucking Santa! What are they going to do about it? Take you to court?”
Slowly I saw a hint of jolliness creep across Santa’s sad face. And then it all seemed to snowball into a proper, full-on, defiant smile, “Double bugger the contracts”, he laughed, “Let’s send them a message.”
The corporation was based in an ugly tower somewhere in the City of London. We flew the sleigh near the top floor and chucked a bicycle (originally due for Maggie Chapman, aged 7) through the boss’s window. Once inside, Vicky and me followed Santa round the building as he used his magic like a dark Mary Poppins, upturning desks, exploding computers and leaving defiant rude messages on the walls in Reindeer shit.
Santa found a small bag of pills while vandalising the lockers of the business high-fliers and before we could stop him, he’d guzzled the lot. At first he seemed surprisingly unaffected – then his eyes started to bulge. “Easter Bunnies” he bellowed, now his face a picture of terror, “Easter Bunnies EVERYWHERE!”.
And suddenly Santa began firing bolts of blue fire in all directions at the imagined animals, puncturing massive holes in the walls and floors of the building. Vicky and me fled back to the sleigh and watched as Father Christmas completed the job of trashing the place. We jumped at a big gas explosion only to then see a half naked Santa, beard slightly singed, leap from a top floor window and back onto his vehicle.
“Message Sent! I think!” he laughed.
The destruction complete, Santa seemed to calm down. He seemed to regain his focus and remember that he did still have a job to do delivering presents that night. When he brought Vicky home she poured him a large glass of sherry and fed him a couple of mince pies. “Oh, how could I ever get truly bored of these,” he laughed, spitting crumbs everywhere. I think the two of them went on a couple of dates in the New Year but I’m not entirely sure, I still don’t get to catch up with Vicky as much as I should.
Later still, he brought me home too. “Thanks, young lady” he said, as he magicked me from his sleigh back into my bedroom. He granted me three wishes in gratitude and by way of recompense for the stolen drugs, but I’m not telling any of you what I did with them because it’s none of your fucking business. You’ll just have to imagine, and you still won’t get close you filthy perverts.
This all actually happened last year. I promise you it did. So I know you are all sick of the commercial stuff but honestly – trust me – the tide was turned when we destroyed that office, the paperwork gone and the hedge fund folded. I would not lie to you about this: Christmas really is going to be fucking amazing this year.
(c) Alan Graham, 2013
Alan Graham studied "Creative Writing" and "Economics" at UEA and is still unsure which discipline relies on make-believe the most. He currently lives and works in London.
Sarah Feathers trained at East 15. Theatre work includes Country Magic (The Steam Industry at the Finborough Theatre), All You Ever Needed (Hampstead Theatre), A Hard Day’s Month (Rose Theatre, Kingston), 26 (BAC), Moll Flanders (Southwark Playhouse) and The Winter’s Tale (The Steam Industry at the Courtyard Theatre). Film includes Coulda Woulda Shoulda, Feeling Lucky and More Than Words. Television includes The Real King Herod.
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