The orange-acned teenager read part of the letter to me: ‘Fit to go back to work.’
Fit? Twelve months of depression after being passed over for the headship at Ysgol Milton Friedman. That went to a kid with a face on him like a lamb sucking on its mother’s teat. Not to the school’s deputy head, with proven management skills garnered from thirty years teaching. ‘The successful candidate has more energy,’ I was told. Meaning obvious: Phillips, you’re too old at fifty-four.
Shortly after came melancholy and lethargy. The GP prescribed anti-depressants. She was a kid too, fresh out of doctors’ college.
It got worse. My wife, Sandra, left. Told me my moodiness would try the patience of an angel, plus she’d met a nice, younger man. That word was like a knife in my heart. Soon after, an overdose of paracetamol. They pumped out my stomach and I’m in the bin, sectioned. Four blurred weeks.
Released, I pass the days in front of the telly. A happy bubble. But then a youthful psychiatric nurse calls me in for a review. ‘The government’s tightening up on incapacity benefits.’ The next week the orange-acned teenager at the Job Centre declares I’m able to work, and says:
‘Plenty of seasonal work around. The Christmas post?’
I lie about having a dodgy back. The next offer I can’t fib my way out of.
‘Ho ho ho? `Course I can say that. And what? Chuckle? Might be able to rise to that too. What other talents are needed? None?’
That’s how I became a Santa Claus in a Swansea store. My clients? Yup. Kids.
Tonight, I’m sozzling my wits in wine to forget my first day there. Forget that seven-year-old stunted paratrooper this morning who grabbed hold of my manhood, and yanked it as hard as a butler pulling a bell cord. ‘This is GBH!’ I shouted to the little bugger’s mother. ‘Oh, give over you soft tart!’ came her reply. ‘He’s only teasing.’
A three-year old girl did a wee on me, soaking my trousers under the red gown. A baby of indeterminate gender grabbed my stick-on whiskers, ripping them off. A slab of skin on one side of my face has been uprooted. Next an inner-city riot. Some stuck-up piece in a fur coat, a stick thin body on her – probably a business man’s trophy wife – let her brood loose on my Santa’s sack. ‘Oi! Only Santa goes in there!’ I shouted. No good at all. They were diving into the sack, pulling the presents out, and then chucking them at each other. ‘Oh haw haw haw!’ guffawed the stick insect, her jewellery rattling like coins in a Salvation Army collection box. ‘Bloody chavs!’ I muttered. ‘How dare you!’ she retorted. ‘They go to a private school.’
The store manager fired me. ‘Inappropriate attitude to youngsters.’
Back home I raise my glass glumly. To the young. Make the most of it kids. The scrapheap’s just a block away.
