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My Santa-cautious daughter seemed a bit sceptical about going down to find if a strange man had entered the house and left presents for her and when we finally got to the fireplace she was not keen to hang around. So we had to carry her pillow case of presents into the other room so she didn't really see the carrot that the reindeer had eaten half or the fact that a large glass of quality whiskey had been swigged down by some unknown person. Typical Santa enjoys the drinks and I get the hangover.
But she warmed to Santa a litle bit as she started unwrapping the presents, every time asking "What is it?" That's sort of the point of unwrapping them, you idiot. She particularly liked her action figure of Rubble from Paw Patrol with accompanying digger. I assume Santa has access to Netflix viewing patterns and can buy gifts accordingly.
We too had been left a surprise gift in the night, by a mysterious and probably inebriated stragner. When my brother-in-law arrived he informed me that part of the wall that separates our house from the road had been knocked down. We went out and sure enough a fair bit of damage had been down. It was amazing, given we've been in the house for the last day and a half that we hadn't heard this happen. There had been a bit of horn blasting this morning, but no crunching of metal against stone and falling masonry. I presume it happened when we were asleep and my guess, from the postion of the impact was that it was someone turning fairly slowly in the road. And though it's possible that a man who had been drinking all day and then (for some reason) necked a triple whisky, might have slept through it, there is no way that the driver could have been unaware of what he'd done. But he (or she, but let's face it he) didn't feel the need to get out and leave a note or offer to pay for hte damage. They drove off into the Christmas night to leave us with the task of repairing the results of their shitty driving. Happy fucking Christmas. If he'd been driving a bit faster he might have made it into our living room.
But a part of me wondered if a drunk man on a sleigh had been the cause of this mishap. I have been pretty naughty this year. Perhaps Santa has moved on from coal to criminal damage.
Also I discovered that my wife had put one of my only expensive pieces of clothing, a nice hoodie made of some beautiful thin fabric that I'd bought the last time we were in America, into the washing machine and it had now shrunk so much that it was a viable present for my daughter.
Why have you done this to me Santa? It's my daughter who thinks you're a cunt and possibly a paedo.
Anyway, these two expensive set backs aside, we had a good day and Phoebe, I think, warmed to the idea of Santa (though we didn't tell her he'd tried to knock our house down). She got so many presents that I wanted to resurrect the dead relatives who'd complained about how spoiled I was as a kid because they only ever got a satsuma and a punch in the throat, to show them how many more presents the kids of today get. And then send them back to their graves and not use this amazing opportunity to tell them how I missed them or loved them. Just to tell them to shut up complaining about my childhood Christmases when my kids' ones would be something worth complaining about.
But my first Christmas in my own house, criminal damage and generational gift envy aside, was a cracker (get it).
