Chapter 5: Christmas in November

Wow! This was amazing, our 23 guests all gathered at the private airfield next to Webster’s Haulage on the last Friday afternoon in November, for what was expected to be the most unusual pre-Christmas event we had ever experienced, knowing full well that my Official Christmas this year would almost certainly be a nightmare.

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 elves, who were keen to help us have a great early celebration of the festivities, staying 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 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.

Just like usual, we filed flight plans to a small northern Scotland airfield that had a long enough runway for small jets and, as soon as we were airborne we disappeared from the radar, our flight plans disappeared from the NATS system and all voice recordings and the memories of all the air traffic controllers who had been in contact with us, forgot we had ever existed, as seamlessly as all our trips to the North Pole. Our local airfield were used to Junior taking off and landing, using a number of planes, which were all registered in the UK so they never invited any curiosity, and over the past 10 months they had seen me learn how to fly and rack up the in-air hours needed to qualify as a pilot in my own right.

Before we took off, while everyone was settling and stowing their luggage for the weekend, I moved down the gangway to where Stephanie sat with Shane to check on how they were getting on. They were holding hands, which I took as a good sign that their relationship was developing nicely.

“Hi Steph, Shane, how are you both keeping?”

“Oh, we’re fine Sis,” Stephanie replied with a smile.

Shane also had a smile on his face as he looked up, “We’re cool, Mrs N. Steph tells me you’re actually flying the plane tonight?”

“Yes, I will be.”

“Do you have many flying hours’ experience in a plane as powerful and, I might say, as expensive as this?” Shane asked.

“Well I only qualified solo a month ago, but I learned to fly in this plane or another very like it, the one that Junior is flying, so I have a lot of experience and been tested for my pilot’s licence in this type of aircraft. You wouldn’t believe the amount of instruments and flying by computer aids in an aircraft of this quality, it’s safer than a commercial airline. I assure you that you’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Behave, baby,” Stephanie jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. “Junior taught Jen how to fly and he has had years and years of experience flying and he even took me up in his small propeller plane a couple of times when I was working during the school holidays for Mum’s ex-husband Mr Webster. I am certain that Junior wouldn’t trust his bride to fly unless he had every confidence in both her and the plane’s abilities.”

“Fair enough,” Shane replied with a smile, looking directly in my eyes, “I was only making conversation. I looked the plane up on Google and while I’m not exactly sure of which model this is, I know that these planes cost at least £60m each and your father-in-law has two of them. He’s definitely not going to be letting anyone other than a first class pilot fly one of these babies, is he?”

“No, my father-in-law definitely wouldn’t. But no offence taken, Shane. How are you both doing at college, by the way?”

“Everything’s shutting down, all the lectures have moved online, which is why most students have left the campus and gone home to study from there and won’t be back until January.”

“And you’ve stayed on in town then, Shane?”

“I wasn’t living in the Halls of Residence, which is usually a requirement for first year students, so we never feel isolated. They have now started closing down the halls as student leave. I got dispensation from the rule of Freshmen living in the Halls because I already had my own apartment locally, like Steph has the same dispensation so she can stay at home with her parents. The apartment is actually my parents’ place. Did I tell you my father was from around there, so over the years we came back here from time to time and visited relatives who remained here, so my father invested in local property. I made the town my choice of university and Dad managed to release one of the apartments for me to use.”

“Release?”

“He owns the building, and rented apartments furnished or otherwise become available now and then and he kept this furnished one vacant for me.”

“Well, enjoy your flight, I’ll get the engines started, do the final flight checks and as soon as the tower lets us go we’ll be off.”

We soon took off and reappeared in North Pole airspace and the elf manning the Air Traffic Control Tower, a cheerfully chatty character called Alffin, warmly welcomed us to the magical land of Christmas.

Of course Alffin knew that we were coming, it had been the leading subject of conversation among the community of Elves for the past month. They all knew about the long-abandoned cabins that had been cleaned, furnished and prepared for us, that Gronwynk, the chief house elf of Santa and Mrs Claus, was in charge of both the clean up and the catering for our magical weekend. And they knew why. They were well aware that, if possible, my new mother-in-law Hilde Claus, Mother Christmas, the wife of Father Christmas for almost 100 years, would make my first official Christmas, since my marriage to their only son Junior, a complete nightmare.

The elves knew they could very little about that situation but they all seemed to want to make sure that our Pre-Christmas event for me, my friends and my family would be awesome. Apparently, this event had never been contemplated my any previous Mother-Christmas-to-be and the fact that this year it meant that two Christmases would be celebrated, the Elves thought that was such a great idea that the number of volunteers to take part, any small part, took on proportions close to 100% of the elf population, and the Santa relatives of my immediate acquaintance all loved the idea too.