IN SANTA'S STABLE

Maybe it's time for a bit of Industrial action up North...

“It’s cold out there,” tinkled Marybeth the pixie in charge of Santa’s stables. “I’m blowed if I’m going out there again today!”

“Then think of us,” snorted Rudolf with his nose pulsating with a crimson anger. “We’ll be doing a double shift before the day’s out. We’ll be zooming all over the world, from country to country, from continent to continent and hurtling for hours across oceans and seas. Have you ever wondered how we do it, eh? Have you ever bothered to wonder what it might be like hurtling half way round the world with only the Pacific Ocean beneath your hooves and nowhere to land if you need a breather or a wee dram of something warming?”

“No I haven’t, and nothing that you say changes the fact that it’s cold out there!” snapped Marybeth, fed up wit the constant rumbling complaints by the Reindeer in chief. “I’m not a furry brute like you and my gossamer wings go all crisp and crumbly when they freeze, and it bloody hurts!”

Rudolf snorted and a great cloud of steam raced out of his nostrils and formed a small rain cloud near the ceiling of the stable.

“And you think that’s all that troubles the world, do you?” he sneered, “a pixie with frozen wings when there are wars out there, wars that me and my sleigh have to circumnavigate or get shot at by morons with guns? And bombs falling here, there and everywhere, careless of who gets mutilated or killed? Crumbled villages and towns with more holes than bricks in the buildings and streets blocked with fallen, blasted and battered masonry? Has it never crossed your pea-sized brain that there are people out there who are really hurting, children bleeding into the sands where there ought to be smiles and happiness, old ladies with their legs blown off praying to die sooner rather than later and babies, yes, babies, left to perish in derelict streets by dead mothers… those are troubles, my pixie friend, and they’re a lot more serious than crumbling wings on a pixie who doesn’t need wings anyway!”

“You’d think there’d be peace, wouldn’t you?” sighed Marybeth.

“Never, where there are humans involved,” grated Rudolf, “why, Santa could tell you a thing or two, but he won’t because he’s sworn to secrecy, but some of the things he takes to the little children of the world on Christmas Eve actually teach them how to kill and destroy and wage destructive wars! They always have. Why, I remember way back, centuries ago now when I was no more than a knock-kneed fawn, how we delivered swords on Christmas Eve before it was even known as Christmas Eve. Weapons they were, and even if some of them were made of wood they could do a fair amount of damage if wielded in anger. I’ve seen small boys smite their little friends in street battles and even take their eyes out! Oh yes, Marybeth, it’s the gifts that Santa is obligated to deliver on time to the sweet little mites that sometimes sow the seeds for wars! Just like acorns in a forest sprout into little scraps of green only to grow into mighty trees. Yes, I know what I’m talking about all right. So don’t you keep on harping on about your pesky fragile wings because you never fly anywhere anyway.”

“I might, one day,” sniffed Marybeth, knowing that of all those who lived in the frozen wastes of the far North, Rudolf was by far the wisest. Even Santa said that, and Santa knew just about everything.

“If you knew what flying was like you wouldn’t want to do it,” muttered Rudolf, loving the chance to have a really good moan to a fellow servant of the fat bearded man. “I’ll bet you don’t know that the higher you go the colder it gets. You reckon that it’s cold out there, but that’s nothing to high altitudes over the Cairngorms! Why, I’ve even been up there, higher than the highest mountain, when my glorious red nose has turned blue with the cold! Yes, you might not believe that, but it has. And me and the lads in the other stables have been putting our heads together and have come up with a plan.”

“I wondered what you were all neighing about,” confessed Marybeth.

“I could tell you, but if I did I’d have to kill you afterwards,” joked Rudolf, “but I’ll give you a clue. We’re thinking of … thinking of, mind you, nothing’s set in stone, of going on strike! There, then, that’s more than a clue, I’ve come out tith it straight! The fat man in his warm and cosy red outfit and that monstrous set of whiskers he’s always so proud of doesn’t know yet, but he’s going to find out.”

“But why would you do that?” asked Marybeth.

“Easy. It makes sense. We hate it when my nose turns blue. All of us and not just me because, well, to be honest, it’s too cold for any mortal creature to be out and Santa does like to go high. He reckons he’s more of a mystery when he can be seen ho-ho-ing as he passes the moon on a bright winter’s night. He reckons that people down below, people in the warm, mind you, with blazing fires in the hearth and their eyes on the night sky outside their double-glazed windows, he reckons that they like looking up and seeing us as we make our way across the round face of the moon, and that they get all romantic about the wonders of Christmas. And I say pah! to that! They’re not out there shivering, are they? They’ve got their warm hearths and tots of whiskey and the kids tucked up in their beds...”

“Is that all?” asked Marybeth, “you’d ruin Christmas for all those poor little children by going on strike?”

“It’s not everything,” growled Rudolf, “have you ever seen Santa when he’s been down his first dozen chimneys? There are still coal fires about, you know, and that means soot and soot is grimy and black. And he expects me and my chums to lick him clean! I ask you, lick a fat man clean when he’s covered from head to toe in soot! Would you want to do that? Of course not! And why does he get sooty, I ask you? It’s his ego, that’s what it is. Pure unadulterated ego. Someone wrote a story, oh, ages ago, and it contained the fancy idea that a fat man in red goes down chimneys, so down chimneys he has to go. He gets stumped by all the gas boilers and underfloor electrical heating though, and thank goodness. No chimneys, see. He has to hope there’s the odd window left open, or failing that he jemmies doors open with his iron crowbar. But he won’t be doing that this year, when we’re on strike!”

“I heard that!” boomed a voice from the back of the stable. “You on about striking again, Rudolf?” continued Santa as he wobbled from the shadows where he’d been lurking and listening in. “I’ve lost count of the many times you’ve done that, but I know it’s all just words.”

“It’s not this year,” growled Rudolf.

“Why? What’s different about this year?” asked Santa, curiously.

“There’s been an explosion in right wing politics just about everywhere, and we all knows what that means, don’t we?” snorted Rudolf.

“We do?” asked Santa, “what?”

“Wars,” savaged Rudolf, “when the nationalists starts mouthing off there’s always wars and I’ve seen enough of them! So I’m staying here. Sod the lot of you! I’ve had my belly full of being shot at.”

“Maybe you’re right,” sighed Santa, “yes, maybe you’re right. Let’s take a season off, shall we? Mince pies and sherry for all and no fear of being breathalysed in the outback or freezing our bollocks off over the Alps. Hurrah!”

“Sense at last,” sighed Rudolf, “and we’ll have all those toys to play with, won’t we?”

© Peter Rogerson 16.12.17