I had an email today from an old friend who lives far north on the border of Finland and Norway and it is so interesting that I thought I should pass it on. He only has a part-time job [really seasonal] and so has a lot of time for genealogy and his family is quite unique. He writes to tell me this will be his last communication for some time as this is his busy season and he can hardly leave his grotto right now – he hasn’t even had time to shave for several weeks. His main business is ranching. Of course up there you cannot keep cattle so he keeps reindeer. He also does repairs of sleighs, bells, toys etc and ekes out a fair living. His wife, Tooth, [her maiden name was Fairy] has a full-time job as she goes from house to house every night removing recent tooth debris of young children from under their pillows and leaving a sum of money.
He complains about the huge volume of mail he has to deal with and has, as assistants, a few idlers from the National Elf Service who are all talk about targets and rather poor on delivery.
He also says that he has to go into a clinic every January due to having consumed [in a single night] 1,785,083 mince pies, 429,776 litres of milk plus sundry sticky sweets and toffees with bits of lint adhering.
Despite all of that he has been able to trace his ancestry right back to Saint Nicholas about 1600 years ago and has found countless cousins, all more or less in the same line of work, like Kris Kringle, Pere Noel, Santa Kuroshi and Basbouschka. He is confident that when the new site
www.52BC-online is up and running he will be able to trace right back to one of Three Wise men. He assures me that a certain Gordon B. who pretends to be in the same line of work is not related.
In closing, because he has to shoe Rudolf, he assures me that the rumours about him being seen kissing Mummy are quite untrue – it was actually David Blunkett. If this ugly rumour persists he will be forced to appoint an Omission of Enquiry.
