What happened at the Annual Reindeer Races?

Well, I was much too tired to write this up yesterday, because, wow, what a day!! With things happening that not even the Ghost of Christmas Future saw coming. Though to be fair, that might just be because she’d put her robe on back-to-front again and couldn’t see through the back of her cowl.

Most of Yule Town was still asleep, so all the twinkling lights weren’t. Instead, all the windows were black and you could almost hear the soft thrum of dreams drifting out the chimneys, and the fizz as they popped against the snow.

Anyway, once I eventually found Santa’s glasses after he’d left them (for some reason) in the microwave, we took an early cable car to clatter tree-to-tree high above the sleepy town. Below, a few shadowy gonks bumbled about, tripping over each others’ beards, as they shovelled snow from the main paths.

At last, we reached the Reindeer training ground. I was in my old tweed commentator jacket, and Santa had his customary tracksuit bottoms, padded coat, baseball cap and cheerful smile. He also had a whistle on an old piece of string tied around his neck.

“For sure Ronald, they need to be fast,” Santa told me for about the 100th time, “but to be outstanding, they need blitzen reflexes, and they must be able to work as a team.”

There’s always more to setting up the Annual Reindeer Races than most people guess, and thankfully Santa had organised about 100 of his best elves to help. As I mentioned last time, there’s the smoke machines for the chimneys. But we also have to mark out the track and make sure the false roofs are covered in extra-slippery ice.

These days we also have a couple of penguin pilots flying small aeroplanes, through the clouds, that the reindeer need to dodge.

The reindeer showed up next, with their trainers (they didn’t fit their hooves very well, so I’m not sure why they bothered). We had five competitors this year, the smallest number for several years. But then, with all the nasty business of the Traitor of Yule Town just before last Christmas, everyone’s still a little bit out of sorts.

Anyway, the reindeer competing were:

• Sonicburst
• Silversun
• Quickwing
• Schwarzkopf
• Dolphin (which is a stupid name for a reindeer if you ask me, for fairly obvious reasons, but don’t tell his mother I said that, as rumour has it she sharpens her antlers).

Slowly, slowly, the crowds started showing up, and there was pre-event music from that punk-rocker penguin Riff that Santa’s so fond of (though personally, his music makes me want to shove my head in a barrel of piranhas).

And then the races started, and then everything, quickly went wrong…

Hang on? The time is what? I’ll miss Strictly No Dancing, if I keep tootling here, and I need a cup of tea first.

I’ll finish this tomorrow.