Right, it was Santa’s dandelion and burdock frenzy last week. He seems to be over that, but there’s been quite a lot of employee injuries this week.

Thankfully, he’s got his trusty nurse, Doreen, on hand to help out. Santa seems to be really proud of her efforts!

Documenting a Disaster

The day began like any other. I awoke feeling pretty the worse for wear and so grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the bedside table and took a long slug, before chucking up on the floor by the bed.

I felt pale and shaky and was sweating a lot and on edge a tad more than usual.

The wife said, “Are you okay, dearie?” And I bellowed, “SHUT UP!” She’s ALWAYS nagging! Stupid woman.

I didn’t bother getting dressed and waddled out into the hallway, intent on getting to the canteen to eat food and go to the toilet on the canteen floor.

But then it was there before me. The giant bastard. The huge, terrifying, monstrous unit known in legend as Aqrabuamelu. The scorpion man.

That bastard snarled something like, “I’ve been waiting thousands of years for this moment, Santa Claus!” And I bellowed back so bravely at him, “You and me, too, Aqrabuamelu! Prepare to die!”

Aqrabuamelu drew forth a 20ft sword and I yanked out my bazooka (not a euphemism). It was all set for a noble battle to the death.

Now, I thought I’d won that. The next day there was no sign of Aqrabuamelu amongst the rubble, flames, debris, and hundreds of elves taken out in friendly fire.

I called an emergency meeting with Mary, my head elf, in my office.

“Is there any sign left of Aqrabuamelu?” I asked. She looked a bit surprised by this statement.

“Mary! I need you to wake up this morning! I’ve noted you’re slacking of late. So, tell me now, where’s Aqrabuamelu?!”

“Er… who is Aqrabuamelu, sir?”

“The giant scorpion fiend! I spent all day yesterday waging battle against him to save you all and you’re telling me you’ve no idea what’s going on! Stop slacking, Mary!”

“Erm… sir, have you checked the CCTV footage? That’s what we usually do when there’s confusion like this.”

“THERE’S NO CONFUSION, IDIOT!” I bellowed at her. I went on a 30 minute long rant about how lefties are destroying society and no one works hard anymore. At the end of which I decided to check the CCTV tapes just to show Mary how incredibly wrong and incompetent she is.

The footage I watched then revealed a different story.

It showed me, stark bollock naked, battling no one but my imagination. I then recalled I’d been hitting some drugs with Rudolph over the previous day and was simply having withdrawal hallucinations the morning I saw Aqrabuamelu.

Mary shuffled awkwardly on the spot as I came to this realisation.

“Very well!” I blurted out. “What about casualties?”

It turned out 37 elves were slaughtered and another 100 were severely wounded. “CHRIST!” I bellowed. “I’ve got Christmas to take care of! Just… just get the nurse onto them, okay!?”

And so that’s what happened. Nurse Doreen to the rescue! So I left her to it.

Nurse Doreen Isn’t the Modern Day Florence Nightingale

57 hours after the incident I drunkenly turned up at 2am in the medical quarters to check on the elves who’d been injured.

I wasn’t really there to do that, I was trying to score some CALPOL. But Nurse Doreen saw me arriving and said, “Santa! So great of you to come and lift everyone’s spirits!”

Belching exuberantly, I agreed to visit on the little bastards.

And, well… bugger me. Nurse Doreen is going senile by the looks of things. After I’d seen the horror show of dorm beds with groaning elves, I checked the medical charts to see what Doreen had been up to. This was her course of action:

• 37 operations for open heart surgery
• 20 head transplants
• 447 injections of paracetamol into elf eyeballs
• 446 eyeball transplants
• Using cheese to dab on open wounds for a placebo effect
• 17 impromptu hair transplants for balding elves
• Colonic irrigation for everyone

I asked her what the chances were for the elves’ survival. “None!” She announced sharply. “Right! I need to hire more staff!” I bellowed and marched off to get wasted.

Getting Some Me Time

I let Mary get on with hiring more staff. This left Santa free to indulge in a bit of well deserved me time.

So I decided to buy water beds. 10 of them. They were flown in by helicopter and I had them all neatly arranged in my sleeping quarters.

“They’re nice, dear, but why did you buy ten of them?” My stupid wife asked. “TO SLEEP ON THEM, WOMAN!” I bellowed.

However, that night I slept on one water bed and I had an epiphany. I can’t sleep on all 10 water beds at once, which renders nine of the others superfluous.

This seemed like a waste of water beds. However, that night I slept fitfully and fouled myself and wet the bed.

That morning, I noted the irony of wetting a water bed. I had a good belly laugh about it. “Bitch wife!” I said, “Wetting the water bed! There’s a hit single in that!” And I laughed and laughed about that.

I hadn’t laughed as much in many a month and just kept on laughing. I came across Rudolph later that morning and he was incredibly distressed by my fits of hysterics and galloped off at great speed.

The laughing continued for many more hours and led to me developing a really nasty, retching cough between fits of guffaws.

Wife was real worried. She got Mary in to look at me because I just, near the end, was prone on the floor laughing and laughing and laughing.

Mary got the nurse in and Doreen gave me a sedative. This calmed me down a bit.

She also tried to perform open heart surgery on me and give me colonic irrigation. “Piss off, you stupid woman!” I roared. “You need some medical training!”

I was knackered after all that, so I went to have a lie down on a water bed that wasn’t soiled.

Coming to from my nap, I found I’d wet the water bed and fouled myself again. I made the same joke to myself and promptly began another laughing spree.

Except this one got mega serious and dark real fast.

The laughing fit grew into a, kind of, demented fury and I began snarling and frothing at the mouth.

Doreen told me later that it was just the withdrawal kicking in again. That explains why Aqrabuamelu returned to me.

Except this time he was a bit more friendly and we had a game of croquet out on the ice tundra of the North Pole.

Of course, that turned out to be another hallucination and I almost died due to frostbite and hypothermia. Thankfully for mankind, I’m here, fully recovered, and have returned to drinking heavily.

No more drugs for me! Just good old absinthe. That’s the only thing that’ll save Christmas 2021.