The Sanity Clause

I have just played Santa for the first time.

Well, not quite the very first time. I have done it once before for a class of students I was teaching.... but I'm used to making a tit of myself in front of my students: it's my job, after all. Rather a different proposition to do this before an audience of grown-ups, most of whom I'd never met before.

I am, I protest, not yet old enough for the role! Not old enough by a good 1,500 years!! And not fat enough, red-faced enough, or white-haired enough either.

And, well, my image of Santa is that he is played by your dad.... or by a pensioner in the local department store grotto. Santa should at least be stoutly middle-aged, if not borderline geriatric. I protest I am neither (although the carefully concealed DOB on my passport does suggest middle-aged as a fair description these days, I refuse to have any truck with that!).

Protest as I might, my friend Dishy Debs was immovable. She claimed I had 'volunteered' for the part (all I had done was to incautiously mention that I thought I had a Santa costume in storage somewhere), and she wasn't going to let me wriggle out of it.

It was actually quite a laugh. The best bit, in fact, was walking down the street in costume (I'd got changed half a mile up the road, in the Yacht Club, in order to generate more surprise, a greater sense of occasion). What should have been a 5-minute walk took me more like 15. Numerous people - both foreigners and locals - stopped to stare and snigger (a young couple in the Yacht Club insisted on getting a photo). My stopping to take a piss in a public toilet was especially fascinating: a small crowd gathered at the door to watch me. Back on the street a few minutes later, a guy passing on a bicycle did such an extravagant double-take at me that he almost fell off. Two cops in a passing patrol car stopped to eyeball me. A couple of other bars en route ushered me inside to bless their patrons with a quick "Ho, ho, ho".

Yes, that walk - and everything that followed it - is a happy blur. The boss of the Yacht Club had stood me a shooter of vodka to get me in the mood. My pal The Choirboy, lurking in a restaurant a few doors down, dragged me in there for another shot just moments later (I was getting quite appropriately ruddy-cheeked after that!).

And my present-distribution role did ensure that I got to speak - however briefly - to all 70 or 80 guests at Debbie's party.

A fine start to the festive season.

God, it did make me feel old, though. Santa Claus? Me?! Ask somebody else next year, please, Debbie.