Fabulous Fairies and Coca-Cola Santas
Paranoid Parent tries to dodge the Father Christmas question and gets well and truly busted
Help
Twenty-nine days to Christmas and counting. So much to do. Two birthday
parties. Why do children have to be born at Christmas? Really mustn’t take holidays in April. Christmas tree. Family visits and presents. Loads of presents which all have to be bought, lugged across car parks – actually, eBay, Amazon and ITunes have lightened the load – wrapped and then carried hundreds of miles so we can share what my husband calls a sad commercial event with said family. Thank God for the Spirit of Christmas. Only
meant to go for an hour. Did very well. Great shop for miniature commandos sorted out the boys. All five of them, cousins as well! But now I am panicking about the stockings. Hubby gets one too. Well, if he doesn’t, then I don’t, and now that my mother has stopped leaving one outside my cottage door I am jolly well going to make sure that if I am doing five, I will at least get one too, even if the quality does vary from year to year. One year was fab: even got Kitty Arden placemats. That was the year when I sent a list of anonymous emails with links to my favourite shops. It really worked, until the American Express bill arrived. Next year, I was back to soap and DVDs about space which strangely enough is what he likes to watch. However did we ever get into this malarkey?
Having spent a fortune – well – by this stage of things, the bank’s fortune on presents, I now have to start all over again. Usually, I am fairly organised. Some little shop in Scotland pays dividends in August with natty little stocking gifts but this year the cupboard is bare. Fortunately another Christmas fair came up with Sir Plus silk boxers and woolly socks and a chutney festival in a Peebleshire castle produced dividends - well I couldn’t resist - hauled the family 500 miles to banquet in a castle. Hope the kids like banana chutney. Then I have to run the gauntlet of the
Father Christmas fable. My smart little cookie, girl, nine, has worked out that Father Christmas probably doesn’t exist. Didn’t help that she read somewhere that Coca-Cola turned him red. It doesn’t help either that she voices her opinions, loudly when the brothers are around. Dear sweet little boys all believe he really does squeeze down the chimney and leave large white snowy size elevens
www.firstelevenmagazine.co.uk Michaelmass 2011 FirstEleven 61
across the sitting room rug. She caught me completely unawares. “Mummy I don’t think Father Christmas
really exists.” I am staring at the tax bill. Oblivious. “Mmm,
mmm,” I say, then wise up. “Of course he’s true, sweetheart. How can you
get presents if he isn’t.” “But I thought he was supposed to make
them in Lapland . So why does he buy them at Hampton Court, because it said £2.99 at the end of the Katherine Howard pencil?” Oh crikey! Had forgotten she can now read, and I’d obviously forgotten to remove the sticky label, too. “And Mummy. If Father Christmas is buying
his presents in London, who is tramping fake snow into your sitting room carpet?” “How do you know it’s not snow?” “Well for one thing,” she says sharply, “it
doesn’t melt. “And Mummy if he’s not tramping snow into the carpet who is eating the biscuits and port and leaving teeth marks on the carrots we leave out for Rudolph?” She’s no fool. Just like the tooth fairy. Hers
was a fairly hopeless one at the best of times. Always late and then making up for it by putting two pound coins instead of a one pound coin under the pillow. Once, she was a week late. There was a problem. Fairies don’t do foreign exchange. So we had to wait until the plane had
landed at Heathrow. Told her her fairy didn’t like flying. Don’t think she believed us then, and that was when she was three. Anyway, whichever way you looked at it she was an absolutely useless fairy. Unfortunately Smart Little Cookie thinks so too. “Mummy, tooth fairies aren’t real? Are they?” “Of course they are.” I protest. “Anyway you
mustn’t say you don’t believe in fairies.” “Why not?” demands SLC. “Well then one might fall down dead.” “Who says?” “Well Peter Pan for one, besides,” I concede,
“if you don’t believe in fairies how can they put a pound coin under the pillow?” “Well ours usually forgets anyhow.” “Oh sssh.” I hush. “Well maybe she’s not very
reliable, but just don’t tell your brothers.” “That’s lying then. Mummy, I thought you said
we weren’t supposed to lie.” “I am not lying,” I protest. But I am busted,
and she knows it. There is a pause. Then... “Mummy if I don’t say anything, does that still
mean I get my coin from the tooth fairy? Maybe even a two pound coin now that I am older and wiser?” Suggests SLC. Silence. She’s got me over a barrel. The little
minx. Oh well, I console myself, at least she won’t have any problems passing her Eleven Plus exams.
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