Jen's Christmas Nightmare

Satish is the youngest, at 13 he seems to always have his nose buried in a book, although nowadays that has largely been replaced by a tablet. Sati tells me he is apparently a whizz at mathematics, not just the common or garden counting stuff that I do on my fingers most of the time, but super equations working out distances and movements of stars and galaxies and things is space that are out there but can only be "seen" through complicated equations. Satish is a walking brain box, but he is also cute and alive to his surroundings.

Of course, all of them were bowled over by what they had seen on their first visit to the North Pole and, I imagined, it must have been quite a culture shock.

"Well, what did you all think of our trip here and arrival?" I asked as we sat relaxing in the comfortable sitting room of their cabin in front of the roaring pine wood fire, drinking our rich local cocoa, "Was it a shock seeing the elves for the first time? And what did you make of meeting the big man Santa himself?"

Sati spoke first, holding up her hand to the rest of her family as she could see the kids were itching to speak. "This whole day has been absolutely amazing, ever since we got up this morning, packed and made our way to the City Airport in London. We've flown as a family lots of times before, as you know we go back to India for at least a month every two years or so, but I've never been on such a smooth check-in procedure before, and it was very smooth, wasn't it Sanj?"

"The smoothest, it was like we were being treated as Royalty," Sanjay smiled.

"Really, we were," Sati took up where she left off, "then we were led up the steps into the smallest jet we've ever seen and welcomed in the entranceway by Junior. Only then we found out that we were the only passengers on this jet plane. Normally, we taxi for ages and wait for clearance before we get underway, and already suffering from the congestion and anticipation of a day's weary travel ahead of us. But, no sooner had Junior seated us in that spacious and comfortable passenger cabin, and moved through the curtain to the front, and there we were rolling down the runway and taking off. Then your voice came over the tannoy telling us you were the chief pilot and hoped we were enjoying the experience so far and asking if we'd like to look around the cockpit. And then we were up in the air and you left Junior flying the plane to come back and show us around the rest of that luxury aircraft."

"I loved the bit where we went forward and you showed us the cockpit," Satish couldn't hold himself back any longer, "and we found that Aunt Jenna and Uncle Junior were flying the plane, it was so cool, wait till I tell my -- oh, wait, I can't tell any of my friends about this, can I?"

"No, Satish," I replied, "no matter how hard you try, you cannot tell anyone, ever."

"That's all right," he said, "I mean, if they knew this was real they'd all freak out, right?"

"Yes, they would Satish, and it was very clever of you to realise that this has to be kept a secret."

"Oh, I wouldn't tell any of the guys at school that we met the real Father and Mother Christmas. For one thing they wouldn't believe me and secondly, I think it is really cool that I know something that they don't know and will never know, that my aunt and uncle, who is virtually 'family' through friendship, are one day going to be Father and Mother Christmas, I mean, wow!"

"Yeah, Aunt Jen, my friends would also totally freak out if they somehow found out about this and then they would definitely treat me differently," Kerron noted, "not different in a special way but just I think I would be challenged by every new and existing relationship now and in the future, you know, thinking is this person being negative to me because I freak her out in a bad way, or are they trying to get closer to me hoping that I will somehow get them an invitation or some kind of benefit from their knowledge? No, secrets like this are best kept secrets."

"You probably know as Hindus that we have our own festivals around this time, like Diwali now and a mid-winter festival called Makar Sankranti that falls in January," Sanjay said. "I've lived in London for more than half my life, only a few of my patients are Hindu, most are white Christians and we are bombarded with Christmas advertising --"

"-- and me being born in London to British Indian parents and being in a minority going to English schools with mostly English children," Sati said, "we could never avoid Christmas, so we do buy into all the carols, evergreens and cards as it is so much part of British life at home. But, of course, we never had a clue that this place actually exists, that there really is a Santa and everything else that goes with it and that we actually met The Father Christmas himself, in person. This is definitely magic with a capital M."

Just then, Sati's phone started ringing, she looked at me in amazement, "How is this even working here?"

"It just does," Junior answered. "Take the call, I think it's important." And he would know.

Sati answered it after apologising to us all and adding that it was Sikander on the line.

I couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, but after Sati exchanged early pleasantries with her eldest son, she told him to wait and said, "His person to person lectures and meetings have all been cancelled for the next month during the second lockdown and everything is being conducted online, so he might as well come home, so he's asking if he can come home on Sunday or Monday only he needs the fare electronically transferred."

"Wait, we could pick him up and bring him here," Junior said, "How soon can he get to Edinburgh Airport?"

"Sik, how soon could you pack up your essentials and get yourself to Edinburgh Airport? ... he says the next tram is in about twenty minutes according to Google and it takes 30 minutes to get to the airport."

"Tell him we'll be there in an hour and if he checks in at the Information Desk at Departures and ask for 'NP Airtours', he will be given the boarding pass and escorted through the VIP area. Oh, does he have his passport with him?"

"Sik, do you have your passport? ... No, he hasn't, he didn't think he'd need it being based in Edinburgh."

"Tell him to go to his sock drawer, it'll be under his socks," Junior said as he put his hand in his pocket and closed his eyes briefly, "It's there now."

I don't know if you the reader of this little journal remembers the first account of my meeting with Junior, when he was forever pulling presents and even particularly personal items like restaurant and hotel room receipts out of his big red sack? Well, using the red sack is the easy solution which he can get away with at Christmas, but at any other time of year he can simply reach into a cupboard or drawer or even a pocket and pull out appropriate presents, documents and other items that will fit through the opening. As for personal documents like a receipt or in this case a British Passport, the clever elves can recreate it and deliver it to Junior's pocket or, in this case, Sikander's sock drawer, all through dimension portals and seemingly instantaneous as time passing quickly in one dimension doesn't affect any other dimension.

"Er, Sikander, it looks like your passport is in with wherever you keep your socks, so go check your sock drawer. ... Yes? ... No, nothing odd at all about it, we thought that was where it would be, you must've automatically taken it with you. Start packing what you need until January and we'll see you soon."

"Right, I'll go pick him up," Junior smiled as he stood up.

"Can we all go?" Kerron said, "I'd love to fly in your jet plane again. And I want to see my big brother's reaction when he sees the North Pole for the first time!"

"Why not? The more the merrier." Junior loves to fly, whether by propeller, jet or reindeer sleigh.

So we all finished our mugs of hot chocolate, put on our boots and winter coats and took a sleigh ride back to the North Pole Airport and took off in our plane, which was waiting there, refuelled and ready to fly. The elf in charge at the airport sorted out a flight plan from Stavanger to Edinburgh, which he fed into the NATS Air Traffic Control System, and had us recorded as currently ten minutes out of Edinburgh, so we seamlessly materialised into Edinburgh Airspace under the control of the Air Traffic Control Tower in Edinburgh, who guided us in to land just as if we were a normal flight. We taxied over to the private flights area and waited for Sikander to work his way through the VIP system, which was magically smoothed so he was with us only minutes after he got off the tram from Edinburgh centre and made his way to the Information desk.

I welcomed Sikander at the door. He very much takes after his father, who is quite tall and in his younger days had once been a useful fast bowler, representing his University in Chandahar at both cricket and tennis. Sikandar had to do a double take when he saw it was me greeting him on the steps into the jet.

"Aunt Jenna!" he exclaimed, "What are you doing here? I know you work for a delivery company but didn't know you had a collection service in Edinburgh too."

"Well, Sik, the rest of your family are staying with Junior and me at a little winter resort this weekend, some way north of here, so we thought we'd pick you up on the way and you could join in the little holiday."

"Wow, this beats the disappointment of just going home with my tail between my legs."

"Disappointment?"

"Well, you know, Aunt Jenna, finally getting away from home after being at school all those years as a dependant and living independently for the first time in my life, and then I have to go home again after only two and a bit weeks is deflating. Still, almost the whole student body are talking about going home probably until after New Year, so I don't really have much choice because everything on campus will be shutting down."

"Well, all your family are here on board, so come on, I'll take your hand luggage from you and stow it back here."

"OK, so, where are we going?"

"North."

"Just north?"

"Well, that'll do for now. Junior's flying and I'm his co-pilot on this trip, once we take off and reach cruising height, you can come up to the cockpit and have a look around, interested?"

"Yeah, you bet!" Sikander grinned, "And so, as well as learning to run your father's business you're flying jet planes now?"

"I am, I was even sitting in the chief pilot seat all the way up from London."

Shortly after Junior took off and we headed north, we disappeared from the radar of the NATS Air Traffic Control System, and everyone who had helped Sikander come through the airport system immediately forgot they had ever seen him.

We took off from Edinburgh International Airport and flew through the portal to the North Pole. While Junior flew the aircraft I sat in the cabin with Sati's loving family and enjoyed the banter with Sikander who only now was finding out about his mother's best friend and honorary "aunt" and the future I hoped to enjoy one day as Mother Christmas.

Friday evening we dined at the cabin with invited guests Old Nick and Georgianna, Junior's lovely grandparents, his Uncle Henry, who was everyone's favourite uncle, and Beata, the Polish beauty that was once chosen by Junior's parents to deflect him from choosing me as his blushing bride.

Odd choice to invite as a friend, you might think, and even odder that she accepted? Well, luckily, Georgianna had rather taken the sweet girl under her wing and persuaded her to come. Beata actually got on very well with Kerron, who had never worn make-up, and had assumed Beata didn't either, and soon they were talking about foundations, lip moisturisers, eye shadows and blushers to suit skin colour with subtle shades and Beata promising to help Kerron with make-up for the Ball that the Grumpies were putting on for us the next evening.

Meanwhile, Henry and Satish got on like a house on fire talking about constellations and supernovas and particularly the mathematics concerned with quasars, while Satish was mightily impressed that Henry, as one of the youngest sons of Old Nick and Georgianna, and therefore never destined to be a Santa in his own right, had a career as physics and maths professor in Switzerland for about two decades between 1890 and 1910, during which Albert Einstein was one of his many brilliant pupils.

After a great meal cooked for us by the elves, we slept well and on the Saturday and Sunday mornings we enjoyed ourselves in the snow, throwing snowballs, making snowmen, tobogganing down slopes and taking sleigh rides with hot chocolate to revive and warm us through. My friends made some wonderful friendships with our elf friends and Gronwynk told me that everyone they met was so taken by how polite, friendly and charming my friends were.

***

Of course on the Saturday night we couldn't avoid dining with Father and Mother Christmas, along with a few other guests, including the beautiful Beata. She was really stuck at the North Pole, had ingrained herself with the place and it would have been an emotional wrench for her leave and go back to her life in Poland and have all that she had experienced and the effect her unspoilt charm and beauty had on the friends that she had made in the North Pole erased from her memory, that they couldn't bear to let her go. She sat next to Kerron during the meal, as they were both about the same age and had already struck up a friendship that I hoped would last as I felt that they would both benefit from it. Kerron was already shining with a new confidence in herself.

It was during that dinner conversation that Sati heard that I was married to Junior in a ceremony conducted by no other person than Old Saint Nick himself, the original Santa Claus, in a traditional marriage ceremony on St Stephen's Night. I admitted that, although I had only been engaged to Junior the day before, I agreed to marry him then and there because Junior's grandmother, Georgianna and the venerable Saint himself asked me to marry him then and there, and Junior was stood immediately behind me as I said yes.

"But you told me you were married in Gretna Green!" Sati exclaimed to me.

"Not quite. My marriage certificate says 'Gretna Green', Sati, because when I am away from the North Pole and in company with anyone not in the secret of Christmas, even my best friend, I simply can't talk about being married in the North Pole by St Nick himself."

"Gretna Green just happens to be a convenient place to register an otherwise clandestine marriage," explained Georgianna, who was also at the dinner and sitting close to us, "Nick and I were actually married twice, the first time after a long four-year engagement, at my father's original parish in rural Gloucestershire, where he had started out as a parish vicar long before he was elevated to a minor bishopric; then we were married again by St Nick a couple of weeks later."

"When was that?" Sati asked the willowy and very beautiful grandmother, to which she replied, "1816, Sati dear. I was just 21, so yes, before you ask I was actually born in the 18th century and have lived a long and very happy and fulfilling life and am looking forward to the time when I am a great grandmother to my favourite grandson, although," and she dropped her voice to a whisper in Sati's ear, "I have already been a great-grandmother 14 times."

This was a beautiful woman who looked to be in well-preserved middle age, not a woman already a quarter of the way into her third century.

You should've seen Sati's face, it was a picture, if you like pictures of wide open eyes and slack-jawed open mouths!

I kept my contacts with Hilde and Young Nick that evening as minimal as I could get away with, citing my involvement in entertaining my weekend guests but Junior did speak more extensively with them, reinforcing his position that I was his soulmate, that we were happy developing our loving relationship and confirming that once we had our pre-Christmas out of the way, he would devote himself to studying the Father Christmas business with his father while I learned the mothering side of Christmas from my Mother-in-Law.

All in all, when we came to fly back to England and my weekend guests returned to their normal humdrum lives, on that Sunday evening, my relationship with my best friend was renewed and reinforced. Both of us promised that even though we no longer worked together, lived in the same town or saw each other every day any more, that we would be in constant contact. Even though Sati now knew that when she was eventually grown into a very old woman, I would still look as though I was a young woman in my thirties. But true friendship can survive the injustices of time and magic and I was sure we would continue to benefit from the trust and love between two disparate people who had always simply got along with each other and continued to value what we have together as friends.

And that, my readers, is how my best female friend and all her immediate family of contented non-Christians stayed with us for the weekend and were drawn into being part of our magical Christmas family. It was a fun weekend and I was very happy and was really looking forward to the pre-Christmas event, not having a clue what a nightmare it would turn out to be in its immediate aftermath.

CHAPTER 5 CHRISTMAS IN NOVEMBER

Wow! As I sit writing this journal on a fresh pristine page, I cannot believe what a wonderful early November Christmas celebration we've had. I laugh when I recall last November when Junior sneaked into my tiny rented studio flat to remind me in my dreams that Christmas was coming, I was so annoyed. Little did I know then what was coming.

This last weekend I'm November was amazing, our 23 guests all gathered at the private airfield next to Webster's Haulage on the Friday afternoon, for what was expected to be the most unusual pre-Christmas event any of us had ever experienced, knowing full well that my Official Christmas this year would almost certainly be a nightmare at the hand of my mother-in-law.

Together with our guests we occupied six of the eight log cabins in our isolated little hamlet on the edge of the settlement of the North Pole, with some of the helpful elves, who were keen to ensure we had a great early celebration of the festivities, staying with us in the other two cabins.

Sati and her family drove up together in their people carrier and left their vehicle safely in our garage at our Hollyhock Hill home. The rest of the family were locally based and they drove directly to the airport. Our company, Webster's, was working normally on that Friday but, once they finished work on Friday evening, all the vehicles in the compound would be safely locked away until we returned on Sunday afternoon.

We had two executive jets belonging to Santa's family parked on the airfield runway fuelled up and ready to go.

Now Santa and Hilde rarely leave the North Pole, which was unusual for the younger of the previous Father Christmas families, as many had second homes which they used for most of the year, or at least for a few months of healthy sunshine. Old Nick and Georgianna, for instance, had a home in a very rural part of Gloucestershire that they had owned since the early 1800s and spent all spring and summer there, barely noticed by the local villagers that they never seemed to grow any older. I suspect they thought they were vampires and as long as the villager weren't freaked as blood-doners they seemed happy to live alongside each other without any qualms. So these executive jets were exclusively used by Junior's uncles and aunts throughout the year flying back and forth to far-flung homes.

Junior piloted one plane containing my father's family of five, Bernie's family of five and Miles' family of four aboard. In my plane I took my Mum, her husband, step-daughter Stephanie and her boyfriend Shane, plus Sati and her family.