`Actually getting paid for it
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D0 you mind if I take my whiskers off? (said the elderly gentleman). The kiddies might complain if I get them tangled up with froth. He fixed his long white beard somewhere inside the long red coat with white fur cuffs and collar, which he had already hung behind the door. Returning to the bar he took a long drink from his glass.
Much better than wassail, whatever that may be (he continued). I hope you are not disillusioned by my modern tastes, but I can never understand why, when everyone else is anxious to get with it, I am supposed to stay frozen at the North Pole and in the Middle Ages. Because I am considered a back number, nobody above the age of about five will take me seriously.
People seem to think that, following all these years of service on a kind of milk round at chimney level, I cannot be the genuine article when I turn up at the local emporium. They are the anachronisms, not me. They have failed to study the latest theories on town planning, traffic engineering and all that jazz. They forget that I have every facility for keeping up with the times.
Take this beard, for example. It was all very well when shaving at the North Pole meant more often than not that you were scraping off a i-in. layer of ice. But with modern. shavers you can avoid all that and, I suppose, I have given away more of them than anyone. So why should I not get rid of my whiskers? Of course, I must still appear to be wearing them or the children would not recognize me.
And there is the difficulty about chimneys. These days half the people have central heating and there is no chimney anyway. House-to-house distribution is definitely out.
Tough Going to Goring Then there is the problem of congestion. If you have read your Buchanan, your Smeed and your Hall, you will know that history is against me. Planning is the order of the day and my old-fashioned methods just would not fit in, Only last week I took a bit of time off to listen to a Mr. George Gibb, who is managing director of British Road Services. Is it right, he asked, that a vehicle constructed for the motorways should be equally acceptable on the hill winding down to Goring-on-Thames? I know that winding road and some of my best customers are at Goring-on-Thames, If I do not disappoint them I will upset Mr. Gibb.
I also heard him say that while railways exist there would seem to be a case for using them. If I spoke my mind on this subject I would upset Dr. BeechiOg as well, so that it was just as well I kept quiet.
If history is against me on this you can understand about the reindeer. Would they be acceptable to Mr. Gibb any more than to Dr. Beeching? They are not allowed on the motorways for a start, and—let us face it—they become a bit of a problem in modern traffic. And there have been all sorts of difficulties because of the bells. I rather liked them myself. They were a sort of signature tune. But nobody else recognized it. Everyone seemed to think I was selling ice-cream. And when the police had me in court twice in one week under the Noise Abatement Act, or the Construction and Use Regulations, or whatever they are, I decided to go over to mechanical transport and sound my horn instead. You can make as much perishing noise with one of those as you like and nobody seems to bother.
Then there was this stage-struck, red-nosed reindeer wished on me by Walt Disney. These reindeer are like prima donnas. Rudolph was certainly smitten by the personality cult. He had to be in the front rank and then. of course, other road users thought we were going instead of coming. What with one thing and another I decided to bring my equipment up to date as well as my beard. I replaced Rudolph with two efficient red reflectors facing to the rear and in the prescribed position, as they say in official circles. And I got myself a splendid new vehicle.
No Licence You can tell from all this that I try to keep in step. Unfortunately, the authorities always seem to be one move in advance. I shall never get the hang of these modern inventions and I shall never understand the law. Before I could turn round the vehicle was plastered with parking summonses and G.V.9s, and posters saying " Marples must go" and "Down with Nationalization ". Then there came a not-very-polite note from one of the Licensing Authorities asking me if I could see any good reason why he should not revoke, suspend or curtail the licence which I did not happen to hold in any case.
On top of all this you have no idea of the trouble I was in whenever I went anywhere near the docks because I could not show my union card. Not that I was unfamiliar with the labour problem. You will appreciate that my work is seasonal if it is anything, and there is no alternative employment for the staff in the summer months. So they tend to come to this country, usually by way of Ireland with the other leprechauns. And you must have heard all about the drift to the South.
Santa Sell-out?
They were a bit shaken when they found I was there before them. Circumstances were getting more and more difficult all the time. The last blow was when the Chancellor of the Exchequer put a 15 per cent import duty on my products and another tanner on petrol. My interests were being damaged both ways. I thought of joining one of these groups which are so much in the fashion these days. I even toyed with the idea of selling out to Sir Reginald Wilson while he still had some ready cash.
In the end I settled for my present job. I no longer have a traffic problem. I no longer have to worry about vehicle maintenance, speed limits, licences and so on. The labour problem I have passed on to someone else. In a sense I am in the ideal situation: I remain the front man. I am still handing out the toys and getting the thanks. And the best of i is that I am actually getting paid for it.