They are happy, even though Nye keeps saying: “His beard is false, mum. It is.” I tell him I’ve never heard anything so ludicrous which, indeed, I haven’t I drink quite a lot I might have unknowingly conga-ed Then it’s back to the airport on the coach. Both are stingingly cold, but utterly fantastic and exhilarating. The children’s faces shine with the absolute excitement of it all.
Then, it’s the feast, where Nye and Georgia get to sit on Father Christmas’s knee They get presents Georgia gets a game, Wiggley Worms Nye gets a game, Connect 4. And when it’s all over? What do you do then, Father Christmas? It all depends, he says.

Last year, he and Rudolf went to Sandals in Jamaica, “which was very pleasant”. But if Rudolf gets through the audition? “Then I think we are going to have to work on his ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, which needs a bit of brushing up.”
I give him a little kiss and say: “See you at the feast.”
“Yes, my dear, and a very Merry Christmas to you.”
We are herded back on to Bouncy Bus B We are then taken sledding, and on a husky ride. The feminists?
“Yes.”
Are you anti-feminist?
“Absolutely not. Good heavens, no! The thought! Or, as I said to my Chief Elf, Betty, just yesterday: ‘Stick your chest out, dear. You are not making the best of yourself.’ Only joking, ho-ho-ho. I have to do at least one ‘ho-ho-ho’, don’t I? Or people won’t believe it’s really me. I don’t know where the ‘ho-ho-ho’ business comes from, actually, because I am not, generally, a ‘ho-ho-ho’ sort of chap I am quite serious minded, in fact I like Wilbur Smith, too.”
Anyway, he says he has to go now This is, of course, his busiest time of year.

OK?”
“I quite like Danielle Steele.”
“She is jolly good, I agree.”
I wonder if he gets lonely, stuck here in the middle of this forest Is there a Mother Christmas? Is he married? He says not. He says Mother Christmas was invented by “you know, those women who don’t shave and can’t get men”. But it sounds rather good, don’t you think?”
“And houses that have no chimneys?”
“Have you read Einstein’s 1905 paper, The Special Theory of Gravity?”
“No.”
“Good, because then you won’t know that I’m talking total rubbish when I say that if E=MC2, and X+Y=Findus Supermousse times six pairs of navy pop-socks, then the bodily proportions of the average Santa can be reduced sufficiently to slip through even the weeniest gap, and so enter any dwelling. He has worked on his Shirley Bassey for some years now and it would not have been fair He does an excellent ‘Big Spender’ He is getting Matthew Kelly’s autograph for me. I’ve already got Cilla Black’s.”
“How do you get round the world in one night?”
“Have you, my dear, ever read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, as you must know, if you can travel at the speed of light, at 186,000 miles per second – as I can – then time passes so slowly that it almost halts.”
“I didn’t get past the first paragraph, actually.”
“Neither did I I prefer Dick Francis, myself. I am thinking of docking their wages or, if not that, at least no longer offering private elf insurance. And will Rudolf be back by Christmas Eve? This is a big worry, but I could not stop him going to London for the auditions.