Santa's little helpers...

‘It HAS to be a finger’, I thought, staring at the scabrous and ill-formed digit being pointed at my stomach,.  ‘It IS attached to his hand…

‘Right you!’ spluttered the grimy, bearded figure standing in front of me.  ‘Me and the lads, we’ve been talking and we’ve decided to from a..a…a ONION!  That’s right, we’re getting together to tell you our demands and YOU have to do what WE say.’ 

So here it was.  I was faced by a small group of the most shiftless, grubby, workshy and ill-featured Christmas elves you have ever seen and they’d decided to strike.   Somehow the term ‘onion’ fitted – thick skinned and ever so slightly smelly.

‘Yeah, ‘ came a voice from the group stood behind the ringleader, ‘we want to get back to proper Elving – none of this toy soldier rubbish you have us making.  We want to make wooden railway trains, and dolls and bicycles and, and..’.  At this point his imagination failed him and he retreated back to his malodorous fellows.

‘Ah’, I said.  ‘You do remember exactly why you lot aren’t working for the Other Fellow this year? ‘   The little group’s members  looked at the floor, mumbled something incomprehensible and shuffled around listlessly.  ‘One of those poor reindeer will never fly again and two are undergoing long term counselling for PTD.   All because of you lot overdoing it on the foul stuff you made from that illicit still you rigged up in the back of the sleigh.’

‘Beside the point, innit?’ spouted Grimble Wobblehead, who seemed to be their spokeself, ‘as onion members, we got demands.’  

‘Do go on.’ I replied sitting down so I was at eye level with him, despite the threat of my olfactory senses being overwhelmed by being so near to the creature.

‘Er, well we hadn’t worked them out as such.  We’d just decided to put our onion together when you turned up.  So we’ve had a quick vote on a motion put forward by brother Nosebrush over there that we reconvene the meeting in the Melting Snowman tavern and discuss our demands.    We’ll need a few days to get this sorted, won’t we lads?  

There was a general nodding of greasy pointed caps and unwashed beards, and with that the quartet trooped out of the workshop and headed for the seedy Elf bar leaving an unpleasant and strangely corrosive aroma behind them.

With the workshop now in darkness, all that is really left to me is to wish all of our customers a very Happy Christmas, and a Covid free New Year.   We will be reopening our doors on January 3rd, so you won’t get any replies to emails over this period.  However the shopping cart will remain open for those of you getting your 2022 projects underway.

I’ll do the annual roundup of the last 12 months and plans for the next around the turn of the year.

All the very best to You and Yours from Team Baccus!