Nouse.co.uk » January Blues

January Blues

January 23, 2008
Lily Eastwood and Sarah Foster

Ever wondered what goes down in the Grotto? Lily Eastwood infiltrates the frantic high-tech world of international Elfing.

Some people spend their holidays in fulfilling and stimulating work experience placements. Others spend them not working at all under the canny guise of having too much revision to do. The rest of us are thrust into the cut-throat world of temporary employment. It’s not glamourous, it’s not usually fun, and one should be prepared to accept unsociable shifts with unsociable colleagues.

The Christmas season offers special working opportunities for your average student. Not only could you be heading up the Turkey Team at a Waitrose near you, but you could also spend some quality time with Santa down at the grotto. Only a few lucky people get to work with the big man himself. Many people think you have to be four feet tall with naturally pointy ears, but there are plenty of opportunities for us taller folk to get in on the festive action.

I was ahead of the curve already, having started my elfing career at the tender age of fifteen when I would receive £10 and a couple of free mince pies for extracting screaming toddlers from the arms of their mothers and dragging them into a darkened room to see a bearded man. Things have moved on since those days. Working in a certain London department store I made a very merry £100 per day. Easy money? Perhaps.

My job basically consisted of waving and jangling bells as the children entered, delivering a family to Santa, taking their picture and returning them to the shop. This is fairly standard elf fare, but a vast amount of technology lies behind it. In addition to ten pairs of sleigh bells and Santa tummies for the slender Santas, each elf and queue supervisor had an ear piece and mic, linking us to a central control desk. The airwaves were hummed with frantic and entertaining messages: “We’re going to need elves one, two and three for the next batch, I repeat elves one, two and three.” “Control, tell Santa number two that he can bloody well wait until his break to have a piss.” “Hold the kids in the cabins, hold the kids in the cabins! Santa on the shop floor! Don’t let them see another Santa, I repeat, no double-viewings!”

The constant banter in your left ear goes some way to break up the monotony of Nintendo DS requests. The Santas also did their best to spice things up occasionally. “I know!” said one, “Why don’t we sing a song?” The parents look less than impressed but the toddler grabbed my bells and bellowed along enthusiastically. “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!” It’s a heart-warming sight, four children, two parents, grandma, Santa, and Twinkle the Elf packed into a single non-air-conditioned cabin. “Everybody say cheese!”

The odd bit of casual racism and impromptu napping from the Santas perked things up a bit. I first picked up on the vibe when, following a black family coming through, the jolly bearded fellow nudged me and said: “It’s their adults who make all the problems in the world isn’t it? Their kids are just the same as ours, aren’t they?” And I nearly died when he told a Muslim family that it was great that they were “getting involved” and he thought that they looked “charming” in their “outfits”. Apparently he won’t be returning next year.

At least he didn’t let any of the children sit on his knee – that’s very much against the rules nowadays – and the falling asleep was an altogether less serious issue. When I led a family in to find Santa snoring I tried to make out that it was part of our little comedy routine, “Oh no! Look! Santa’s fallen asleep! Let’s wake him up!” Slightly perturbed parents were reassured as their children squealed with laughter and Santa spluttered to life with an instinctive “Ho, ho, ho!”

Of course, it’s not just the Santas causing havoc in the grotto. The customer can be somewhat demanding too. Messages come through from the control desk saying that little Talullah, Noah and Apple expect Santa to magically know their names, or magically know what all they want for Christmas. These kids have serious expectations. One flustered parent asked me to pretend I’d broken my arm, and apologise to her little darling for not being able to make a Nintendo DS on time.

Another surreal moment came when a mother stormed back from the photo collection desk demanding to know why her child looked fat in the picture. I didn’t really know what to say. “Its because your child, Mrs Billing-Smythe, is fat” didn’t strike me as an answer that would placate. It was also her little boy who kicked me and told me I couldn’t be an elf because I was a girl. I told him it wasn’t nice to kick, particularly since I didn’t get out of the North Pole much and he was spoiling my holiday.

Somewhere amidst the casual racism, the horrible children and the vast and gratuitous consumerism, there was something charming about the whole charade. If there was one thing that everyone was united in, it was preserving the illusion for the children. Not just for the spoilt and ungrateful children, but for the boy who asked for a pair of socks for his granddad and the girl who asked for an egg timer so she’d know how long to brush her teeth for. Despite nudges from their parents and their mutters of “ask for something normal”, it was at those moments that I felt I was really a part of the Christmas magic.

Most of the work you do over the holidays may not look that impressive on your CV, but holiday jobs are a rite of passage for students and a precious chance to get out of the campus bubble. As a hint for first years; if your parents resent your slovenly lifestyle, showing them that you can do a decent days work goes a long way, and you’re one step closer to convincing them that university is equipping you with a skills other than elaborate fancy dress or toastie making.

As the tinsel-dust settles, Sarah Foster looks back on her New Year’s resolution to clean up her lifestyle, stop drinking, eat her greens and make an attempt at exercise.

Resolutions are a bad idea. In theory, I can understand the idea of improving yourself, reflecting back on past wrongs and striving to right them. But in practice they tend to do little more than make everyone a bit depressed. After all, no one really likes examining their own faults.

If anything is to blame, it’s the calendar. New Year just happens to take place after that most indulgent of times, the festive season. A time when you’re expected to eat more than your own weight in food in one sitting, and where a mug of mulled wine is a perfectly acceptable breakfast. It is a heavenly few days for most, but it is also inevitably followed by the painful realisation that you must pay for your hedonism.

It was this which led me to my New Year’s resolution. A friend casually asked what mine was going to be, and, chin-deep in guilt, I replied with the stock answer: that I was going to be a healthier person. I won’t abuse my liver, I said. I won’t eat a 500g bar of chocolate in one glorious sitting. I even promised to myself that I would do some form of exercise. In all honesty, I would have said anything to repent for the fact that I had probably eaten enough to feed a sizable village in the preceding week.

For the next few days I almost found myself enjoying my new way of life. I felt quite good about turning away dessert or suggesting that we walk the couple of miles to a friend’s house instead of driving. But then I re-entered the University bubble, and things rapidly began to go downhill.

My smugness increased tenfold. Contrary to my former beliefs, this new healthy living wasn’t making me that much nicer

It was only when I had stopped drinking that I realised exactly how much of my social life revolves around alcohol. I had hardly unpacked when I was invited out to the pub. Upon arriving to catch up with friends, I looked enviously at the bottle of red wine on the table. Would my new health regime allow for one glass? Two? A pub dinner? If I thought that was hard, it was nothing compared to the pain I felt when we ended up in Evil Eye, where I longingly eyed up the cocktail list. But alas, I was being very good this week, and so I looked further down the menu and discovered the amazing selection of fruit juice cocktails; one point to healthiness. I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling refreshed and energetic, so I decided to go for a run. Oh dear. It was wet. It was cold. The ground was muddy. And to make matters quite a lot worse, I had misjudged my ability to be a healthy person. I had assumed that I must be at least capable of running for longer than a couple of minutes. I was wrong, and wa soon forced to return home looking like a drowned rat. There was no way that feeling like this could ever be good for me, could it?

Then came Wednesday. Have you ever tried to order an orange juice in The Nags Head? I got a strange look from the barman, certain that I must want some vodka with it. But no, there would be no alcohol for me. So I sat in the corner, slurping my orange juice, and thinking about how much my body was enjoying all that fruity goodness. Only when a friend turned to me, and yelled – people seem to talk much louder when they’re drunk and you’re not – “We’re going to Ziggy’s now” that a little part of me died. Ziggy’s was not the place for a sober me. I attempted to dance, but found it much harder than I’m used to it being. In the end, I succumbed to my fate and told my friends that I was going home. They looked at me quizzically; surely I was going to stay until the end of the night like normal? They were going to go to Efes, like we always did. I sadly declined. A takeaway at three in the morning probably wasn’t allowed under my new fitness regime. I wandered out into the rain, feeling dejected and stupid, and damning my new found ability to have no fun ever.

That said, I did manage to feel rather smug come the next day. I woke up well before midday and decided to prepare for my seminar next week, so I headed over to the library. I had made pages of notes before I eventually got a text message from one of the friends I had been out with the night before. We had planned to meet up for tea (coffee was out of the question, far too much caffeine in that), but she had spent most of the morning vomiting up her takeaway and so would be unable to make it. My smugness increased tenfold, although it did now seem that, contrary to my former belief, this new healthy living wasn’t making me that much nicer.

But it was only four days into the term and I was already feeling the strain. Friday brought with it a house party, and I had barely been there five minutes before a glass of punch was offered to me. I tried to decline, but just couldn’t. With that glass of punch, my resolution went gurgling down the plughole. I probably ate a pizza, I don’t remember. I felt amazing. I had set my goal too high, denied myself far too many things. There’s self restraint, and then there’s self sacrifice. I didn’t want to become that girl who felt guilty after drinking full fat milk. I couldn’t appease the gods of health. I was a failure. But I was much a happier failure for having taken a few days off; I appreciated my failure more.