SANTA'S LITTLE HAREM

When a fat man lives in a huge palace he might need to duplicate some of the facilities....

Before I begin I need to make one thing very clear. The following account must be kept, at all costs, away from the minds and hearts of your children because it almost certainly contains secret information of a private nature about the comings and goings and inners and outers of the Ice Castle wherein their Santa hero lives. And it may give them cause to doubt everything about him, which would spoil their entire lives.

You see, Santa Claus has a big and remarkably unknown secret, one that if it were to get around would cast a shadow on all the good deeds that he performs during his annual working day. It's such a humongous secret that my own freedom and safety may be at risk if I divulge it, so I'll let him tell you himself.

The following extract from his diary might go some way to explaining what I'm on about.

This morning, after I had brushed my teeth and wiped my bottom, I went into the kitchen to greet my wife with a cheery "Good Morning, Mother Christmas". She was standing at the sink and struggling with a grease stain on a pan and she scowled at me, her usual overweight image of dire misery and contempt.

"Yow've been boilin' up yowr kippers again, ain't yow?" she asked in her rich Birmingham accent.

I was in no mood for arguments, so my response was a brief "so what?"

She put her hands on her waist in that endearing way she has and turned round. Her tightly-curled grey hair was almost smouldering along with her eyes as she stared at me.

"It's me that 'as to clean up behind yow, yow oaf, yow pig, yow great big twallop! I've been a-scrubbin' this stain here for a good half hour an' it won't shift! What you need is a slave, not a wife! Yow wait till the next time yow wants me to snuggle up to yow in bed and yow'll have a vain hope comin'. I wear my fingers to the bones cleanin' up after yow, an' that's no mistake, an' until yow can sort out yowr dirty, filthy ways yow'll have no more messin' about wi me!"

I tell no lie, that's the way the light of my life talks when she's got the mood on her.

Then, having demolished me with a single verbal warhead, she turned back to the sink and continued with her cleaning and scrubbing, continuously grumbling as though a silly burnt-on grease stain was the end of the world.

"I thought I'd have a little breakfast," I suggested to her. "I fancy an egg, a sausage, a couple of rashers of delicious bacon and a fried slice of wholemeal bread with a tomato or two neatly arranged on it..."

She turned back to me again and smiled with those thin lips of hers until her chin started vibrating and her nose dripped (which put me instantly off anything she might hover over whilst she cooked) and almost whispered:

"Yow do, do yow? While I'm slavin' away rubbin' at yowr dirty, filthy kipper stains yow have a little hour-long lie-in, snorin' in yow bed "“ I heard yow - an' then yow expect me to roll my sleeves up and cook yow the sort of breakfast yow haven't earned since Boxing day? Well, sunshine, yow've got another think coming, an' that's a fact! If yow want breakfast yow can make do with a dry crust, an' to make things pleasant for yow I'll scrape the green bits off first for yow!"

That didn't take my fancy, not one little bit, so I told her it was all right, I'd do without, and I made a swift escape from her kitchen.

I made my way down several passages, never quite sure where I was going on account of the well known fact that the passages and rooms tend to move a little during the night. It's all to do with ice melting and re-freezing, but it does make my life interesting in an unusual way. But even though rooms shift, the overall plan of my wonderful Ice Castle remains roughly the same, and I knew where I was going.

I passed many rooms, going through some of them and by-passing others. There were bedrooms in which strangers were snoring (a lot of strangers like to spend the night at my Ice Castle), there were lounges where elves and dwarfs could be found squabbling about the best way to do any number of trivial but essential things concerned with the annual delivery, there were dining rooms set out with silver services at which Lords and Ladies sat and laughed in high pretentious voices and illustrated, with their every word, just how shallow their little minds were, there were drawing rooms where classes of children sat drawing. And there was a whole series of pantries in which Mother Christmas stored all her delicious ingredients for the most marvellous meals she prepared for me and me alone.

And then I came to the kitchen where mother Christmas was sitting on a stool, dressed in her tiniest little red fur-lined dress with its tantalising low-cut bodice, the golden tresses of her hair hanging past her shoulders and teasing the soft and luscious curves of her breasts as they tumbled down to her waist, her smile one of almost unbelievable beauty, an invitation to the secret world of Mother Christmas.

"Hello, my darling," she purred at me, "would you like your favourite breakfast? I can do eggs and sausages and rashers of bacon, with fried slices of wonderfully fresh wholemeal bread, and tomatoes galore perched on top..."

"Soon," I replied, my heart racing, "but first, my love..."

"I know," she giggled, "Shut the door, big boy, put down that diary you're writing in and come over here..."

And at this point that entry in Santa's diary came to an end.

It seems to be full of contradictions. You might suppose he was dreaming, or it could be that the last part was all wishful thinking.

But the truth is, probably, more obvious.

Santa Claus has a big Ice Castle in which he keeps two wives. One, the miserable, plump, sour-faced and rather disreputable one to show the world what a poor deserving old man he is - and the other, young, blonde, desirable - for everything else!

But whatever you do, don't let your children find out. Promise?