Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Fairy Tales, Part the Fourth.

During my days at the Grotto, I not only had to deal with screaming rug rats little children, but also adults. One day, a group of drunk students turned up trying to nick the pressies, and I scared them off by taking the star of the end of my wand*, poking them with it and saying rather loudly ' Ooh folks, look at these horrible people trying to steal presents meant for children from Santa' until a rather large lynch mob crowd had gathered to boo them as well.
Another day, what I can only think was half an inebriated rugby team turned up, wanting to give Santa a drink, and have their photos taken with the fairy**
But the one that really cracked me up, was a woman, in about her mid-thirties, who turned up on her own, a couple of days before Christmas Eve, as we were about to close up and put the reindeer to bed.
She ambled in, had a look around, and then turned to me and Santa and said
"Wow, this is really good, how long has this grotto been here?"
We told here we'd been there from about the end of November.
"Gosh, no-one told me! What times are you open?"
We said that we'd be there for the next couple of days, from 10am, until 7pm.
"Oh" she replied "My little boy would love all this, but I'm working then. I realise you won't be here on Christmas day, so when will you be back, Boxing Day?"
Santa just walked away trying desperately not to laugh out loud, leaving me to explain that he would be going on a rather long holiday, as all the hard work he did on Christmas Eve wore him out.
To this day, I still don't reckon she understood.

* The wand was a rather large knitting needle.
** Me.