Hello,
I hope that you are well and that Christmas is treating you well.
If you are thinking about Christmas presents, might I suggest you spend about a tenner less on pressies and buy a ticket to my show at Soho Theatre in January? :
http://www.sohotheatre.com/whats-on/romesh-ranganathan-rom-com/
Last Sunday we took the boys to have tea with Santa. It was wonderful, in so much as having some fish fingers and then meeting a man in a shed with your children is wonderful.
The kids were wearing hats. And what wonderful hats they were. The youngest, and more feral of the two, was wearing a Santa hat and the older one was wearing a Panda hat. It was an extremely loose theme, with one of the hats based on something that doesn’t exist, and the other one based on something that will probably not exist in the near future as long as we keep pillaging the planet for resources with no thought for future generations. Which I’m not completely against.
We walk into the shed and sit down in front of Santa. His little helper or elf was there, or whatever the fuck they’re called.
What happened next had no immediate effect in the room, but I knew would have massive impact on my next few days.
Santa said this “I like both of your hats, but I think if I had a favourite it would be this one”. Now obviously, he pointed at the Santa hat, the egotistical bastard. God forbid that the serial attention seeker Santa would deign to show appreciation for anything at Christmas that wasn’t cast in his own shitting image.
The Panda wearer said nothing at the time. They merely accepted their presents and left, having said thanks upon the insistence of their mother.
The toys merit a mention here. Santa gave the eldest one a “dinosaur archaeology toy”, where you essentially have a clay rock, and some tools, which you chip away at to reveal the toy within. This basically meant an hour of smashing away at this thing, sending crap flying everywhere, to reveal a tiny dinosaur skeleton that I imagine would be as much fun to play with as one of your own stools. Basically you get a shit toy, and in exchange for that you have to ruin your dining table.
The next day, the oldest boy walked into our bedroom and said “I don”t think Santa liked my hat. He said he preferred Alex’s hat.”
There’s no getting out of this. No escape. I tried “I like your hat better” , but in all honesty I knew that was futile. What was I expecting?
“Oh really Daddy? Well that makes me feel better. I definitely would rather you liked my hat than Santa Claus you absolute twat.”
He didn’t say that – but he was definitely thinking the four year old equivalent of that.
I could not believe that Santa could be so naive. And I don’t think that he was – I genuinely believe he’d taken a dislike to us and had planted this disruptive seed of a comment, knowing that he had paced a large Yule log shaped shit all over our Christmas. We’re still dealing with the fallout now. This is going to cost so much money.
Have a great Xmas. BYE.