9th December 2010

……….We had a visitor today, Old Father Time!  He usually pops in a week or two before Christmas just to check that all the clocks at the North Pole are correct and especially my treasured pocketwatch that I wear on the Big Night! As you can imagine, if that pocketwatch were to be wrong it would throw the whole flight schedule and evening into total chaos! Old Father Time stopped and had afternoon tea with Mrs Claus and myself, which consisted of my favourite mince pies and hot chocolate. Then I took him for a tour around the Toy Workshop, as I know that this is something he looks forward to doing every year! The elves all love Old Father Time dearly and gather around him eager to shake his hand when ever they see him. We visited the Tinsel Testing Room and watched the elves testing the tinsel with flame throwers to see if it was fire retardent. I have to say that I haven’t seen this done before and I found it quite alarming! But I know that they do it safely and only ever use the flame throwers when Head Elf Smokey is present and in charge. He got his name after many years of dedicated and brave service as the Chief Fireman in the North Pole Village. It may be very cold here but we have a lot of machinery and we must always ensure that we never, ever have a big fire here as Christmas would be completely ruined for all the children of the World!……….

Until tomorrow dear diary,

Santa