Years ago, when I was young and foolish and believed the world was a beautiful place, I spent a few weeks in the run-up to Xmas being Santa. More accurately, I spent a few weeks being a Santa – the main man’s job wasn’t up for grabs, and I very much doubt I’d have been in the running if it had.
I was living in Leeds at the time, lodging in a friend’s house, and scrabbling a living of sorts from whatever casual work i could find. Crewing, occasional decorating, shifts behind a bar. I wasn’t fussy. Anything which saved me from the drudgery of a 9-5 was fine by me. That November, my friend’s partner offered me some cash-in-hand work helping to build Santa’s grottos, which sounded suitably offbeat, interesting, and (by my low standards) lucrative. I said yes.
I turned up to an empty, abandoned factory unit on the outskirts of Leeds 6 and found all the usual suspects there. The musicians, the drifters, the chancers. Most of whom I knew. And for the next six weeks we cobbled together grottos with exactly the degree of skill and precision you’d expect of a bunch of stoners and drinkers with precious little discernible work ethic.
The grotto-blasters
The grottos were for supermarkets and shopping centres across the north of England, and – given that none of us knew what we were doing – we did a pretty good job. We cut ply to size, painted it red for walls and green for roofs, and screwed everything together to make something a little akin to a series of gingerbread houses. They looked great. Or so I thought till I drove over to the Lancashire coast to deliver a grotto to an Asda, and found that a rival grotto builder had already erected their version. Evenly painted, cut square and true, window decals not at the slightly jaunty angle of our half-arsed offerings. They knew what they were doing. We were Bodgit & Scarper.
Our grotto business was run by a man who’d previously been a university lecturer, but had a breakdown of some sort and went into grottos instead. I dread to think what our creations did for his mental health. It can’t have been good. But he was nothing if not determined, and god loves a tryer. He decided to dip his toes in the running-a-grotto business as well, and that meant opportunity. He needed a Santa. I was that man.
In the bleak midwinter
In early December, I headed down the M1 in a van with two little helpers and their supply of cheap cider. We rocked up at a shopping centre somewhere in Sheffield, and set to work. Only we didn’t. This was South Yorkshire, it was the late ‘80s, the miners’ strike was still a fresh wound, and it felt like Sheffield didn’t have two pennies to scratch its arse with. The grotto was in the basement of what had been a hairdressing salon, and we spent most of our day sitting among the abandoned washbasins and dryers while the elves worked their way through a bottle or two of Strongbow. When four o’clock came round, we’d shut up shop and head home.
On our busiest days, we had maybe four or five kids brought in by harassed-looking mums who wanted to be anywhere else. The elves would stub out their rollies and hide the bottle, I’d give it my best Santa spiel, the kid would be handed an age-appropriate gift from the binbags of badly-wrapped cheap plastic presents, mum and kid would leave, and we’d get back to watching the clock and reconsidering our life choices. The whole thing felt disappointing and tawdry, consumerism scraping the bottom of its oh-so-predictable barrel.
Snooker loopy
Then there was the day with the kid who wanted a snooker table. He was six, maybe seven. Old enough to be himself, young enough to want to believe in Santa. And he knew what he wanted, and he wanted a snooker table. His mum is behind him when he asks, shaking her head, waiting for Santa to let the kid down gently. Waiting for Santa to make it clear that this is Sheffield, it’s 1987, everyone’s skint, and you might as well wish for a unicorn as a snooker table, kid. It ain’t gonna happen.
But Santa doesn’t. Santa asks why the kid likes snooker, who his favourite snooker players are, where in the house he’ll put the snooker table. And the mum is – silently – doing her nut. Behind her lad’s back, she’s furious. She’s making very clear you-bring-this-nonsense-to-an-end-RIGHT-NOW gestures. If she thought she could punch Santa’s lights out and get away with it, she’d do it, no question, because this’ll mean tears, this’ll mean heartbreak, this’ll mean being reminded every single day that you’re too broke to get your child the gift he dreams of. And there’s Santa, egging her lad on. She could weep for the unfairness of it all.
The spirit of Christmas present
And then Santa hands her kid a present. Open it, he says. And the kid does. He rips open the rubbish wrapping paper and finds inside… a snooker table. A snooker table about the size of a paperback book, with a spring-loaded cue and tiny plastic balls. His mouth falls open. His eyes are like saucers. He asked for a snooker table, and Santa has given him a snooker table, there and then. He can’t believe it. Behind him, his mum is giving me the double thumbs-up, mouthing “thank you”. She’s got tears in her eyes. Even the elves know something special has happened. And behind my scratchy fake beard, I’m grinning fit to beat the band.
Time stops. The outside world falls away. And in an abandoned hairdressers in a half-empty shopping centre in a city that’s seen better days, the five of us know for a fact that the world can still be – despite itself – a beautiful, magical, wonderful place.
Merry Christmas.
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