Ho Ho Ho-nly An Hour To Go

Head of Security, Reg, and HR Manager Nev have been ‘elected’ as their department store’s Santa Claus and his elf helper, respectively, for this year’s Christmas period. It should be a prestigious appointment, but for poor old Santa, the position is becoming increasingly like a prison sentence inside his gaudy grotto. However, it’s late afternoon on Christmas Eve, and he’s in the home stretch now, and during breaks in his ‘Santa-ing,’ he’s been regularly imbibing from his thermos flask of neat vodka all day. He is becoming a little intoxicated and belligerent. His colleague tries to warn him off taking any more, but Reg no longer cares and is intent on doing what he feels like doing. Reg finishes off the flask and begins ranting that he can’t wait to return to his proper job as head of store security as he loves the challenges of apprehending shoplifters. He boasts to Nev that no one can escape his keen eye and that nothing is stolen when he is on duty. No one steals anything from under his nose. Before ending the break, he tells Nev that he can start letting the children back in once he has had a couple of nips from the special single malt whisky he’d been saving for the end of his stint as Santa Claus. He reaches down under his throne but can’t locate it. It appears like one of the children he’d given a Christmas present to took something else away from his grotto – from right under his nose. Reg slumps onto his throne, crestfallen and drunk, as his helper re-opens the grotto and invites the next child to see the not-so-jolly Santa.