Another letter from Santa to me, including advice about not upsetting elves

Dear Fran

So, here we are again, continuing our long tradition of correspondence.  I have to say that I look forward to your letters, but only because when I show one of them to my therapist, he offers me a free session out of compassion.  Normally, he screws me out of a hundred and fifty quid which is a week's wages for three elves and a reindeer physiotherapist, so nothing to sneeze at.

I would like to respond one by one to the requests you make in your letter (and I congratulate you for leaving it until November this year to write ... your usual early February mailing really is too optimistic.)

1. There is, I am afraid, no 'vanishing cream' which will actually melt away flesh.  Getting rid of flesh needs more drastic action.  Have you tried dieting?  (I suspect not, judging from your frequent requests for books entitled 'Losing Weight without Losing the Will to Live' and 'Dieting for the Terribly Greedy'.)  I could help you with the flesh-losing, though, and would be delighted to.  If you would care to visit Lapland at your earliest convenience, I can lie you down in the snow and run a sleigh over your back a few times after I've sharpened the blades and see how much flesh drops off then.  Would this suit?  It would certainly suit me as you're a pain in the arse, to be frank.

2. There is not yet, on the market, a game for the Wii called 'Wii Without Having to Run Upstairs to the Bathroom'.  The emphasis in Wii games tends to be on activity, not inactivity, and anyway I think you may have misunderstood.  I do have, in stock, a large number of incontinence pads (an error - we ordered 'A4 lined' but my elves are nervous these days after their numerous encounters with you and their handwriting is appalling).  The pads may be of use to you if you really can't shift your fat backside off the sofa and get moving, you static lump of lard.

3. I agree that technology has made it easier for drug officers to sniff out the location of cocaine and other banned substances.  But, no, I haven't heard of any similar devices on the market which will sniff out where your husband has hidden the chocolate jar.  I doubt whether the technological geniuses of this world have spent much time working on prototypes such as this just so that bored, dissatisfied women can hunt around their domestic environment for the sake of a Crunchie Bar and an emotional lift.  Have you tried self-harm?  I understand this brings similar comfort to some.  I would be very pleased to visit and help you with this if you don't want to do it alone.  In fact, nothing would cheer me up more.

4. Finally, I must ask you to desist from phoning up the Lapland office.  The elves have had to be advised not to answer the phones and this is holding up business significantly.  But the last one you spoke to had to be offered post-traumatic stress disorder counselling.  It was unfair of you to suggest that you were going to come to Lapland so you could personally feed him into your Kenwood mixer and turn it on to rapid.  He was perfectly correct to say that we had no copies of a book by George Clooney entitled 'Middle-aged Big Lady and Me: A Dream Unfulfilled'.  The elves are here to help the deserving, and I can't think of anyone who deserves George Clooney less, especially as it's been twenty-five years now you've been asking for books he's never written.  Perhaps you should write one yourself called 'George Clooney and Me: It's Just Not Going to Happen' and come to terms with reality, you day-dreaming dork of a fantasist.

Although I say this every year, and every year you ignore me, I really wish you would, now you are nearly 50, leave the write-to-Santa activity to the under 10s.  Yes, they make unreasonable requests too, but even their desires for their own football pitch or a media suite costing thousands are more credible than your repeated requests for three more inches in height and a waist a man can get a hand round.  (I would gladly put my hand around you, Fran, but it would be your neck I'd be wanting to squeeze until you were quite, quite dead.)

With very kind regards, as always,

Santa Claus

Fran was prepared to try all kinds of ruses to get into Santa's stores and check whether what he said about not having any Low-Cal Steamed Treacle Puddings in stock was true