OLD ROY AKA SANTA
A CHRISTMAS STORY
Seeing that it is that time of the year, I think a Christmas story is in order. It just so happens I coundn’t sleep so well. I woke up early this morning so I had better haul bones, get out of bed and hit the computer to tell you the tale, is it a tale? Well not really, but it has kept me from the sleep of the just.
In all the countries of the new world as they called Australia, the Americas and parts of Africa, there have been a special breed of characters. This special breed, were not, as the original inhabitants might have told you, not particularly special and the lands they conquered were not particularly new either. They had lived there for eons.
If we delve back even further in time say a few million years give or take an eon or two we might find even these ‘original inhabitants’ were not all that original at all. They had simply out thought and subsequently killed off the neanderthals or whatever breed of pre human existed in the region, at that time.
Evolution can be cruel and certainly holds no sentimentality for the ‘original inhabitants’. The same evolutionary traits that were bringing about the original, original inhabitants demise was creating the modern man. He had less body hair but kept some hair, as a sort of token to his wildness on his chin. Modern man also developed that symbol of his modernity, a pot belly.
What on earth has this to do with Christmas you might, quite reasonably ask, not much, I might answer, but it does bring us to an enduring image, most of us that live in both the new and old worlds know exactly what Santa looks like and the reason for this is that he has a full beard and a pot belly. Actually he is rather fat but he fools us into not noticing by wearing outrageous red clothes trimed in white, and to be perfectly frank with you, a ridiculous red extended beannie style hat with a whit pom pom and of course we can’t see how fat his jowls are because of that beard.
A similarly enduring image we have of our pioneering forefathers in North America, but more particularly in South Africa and especially in Australia is the same full beard. Look at any picture of early Australian settlers, not just Bushrangers like Ned Kelly or the heroes of the Eureka Stockade but pretty much everyplace in early Australia was a haven for the unshaven.
One never saw a roman with a full compliment of facial hair dangling and swaying below the chin and catching crumbs and droplets. That is not to say Santa claus was Australian or a denizen of the South African transvaal for that, he was of course European.
He was simply too busy feeding reindeer and banging up toys and keeping elves in line to shave. Not to mention Mrs. Claus who hated his beard but he kept it as a symbol of his independence. She wasn’t that keen on his pot belly but cound’t really mention it as she was a bit of a pudding herself.
Santa was not the only one who felt this way about his jowly locks. Bushmen in the new world felt this way as well, no roman shaved chin for them.
It so happens I knew a man to whom most of the preceeding applies, that is to say he was Australian, kept some of his wildness, had a pot belly and wore the full bushman’s beard down to the level of the first buttoned up button on his shirt which was the third from the top.
Lets call him Roy, and a very fine man he was. He came from a loving family and Christmas was a pretty big deal in the Clomp family. Roy had started his hirsuteness at high school as he thought it was pretty cool to have what was at the time a fuzzy chin. Why in the great blazing heavens Roy thought this was attractive is only known to teenage boys, but it must have some effect because they are often seen in the company of teenage girls.
As the years passed Roy left school and went to work for the local council and there he stayed for almost a lifetime working dilligently and honestly and all the while his fuzz grew and grew.
Roy also liked other things, one of which was one of those same teenage girls who became his bride, this was after high school of course and the fuzz was now a light thatch with a touch of the van dyke about it.
As a staid and tried and true type of Aussie man Roy went to his local pub after work on most days and developed lifelong friendships with other mates who enjoyed the odd cleansing ale, they laughed a lot, loved a lot and were pretty jolly all round.
They all developed a love for the Australian countryside as they often went bush when they were not actually in the pub. This did have a side effect for them and for Roy in particular as they liked a drink while in the bush and naturally at the pub. The collected result of a ‘few cleansing ales’ was that he developed a pot belly.
So Roy developed into a jolly, pot bellied man with a wonderfully full beard, and of course looked like one Mr. Clause, Roy was still a fairly young man when the local chapter of The Australaian Order Of Old Bastards asked him to stand in for old Tom McGuiness who strangely never touched stout but was very stout himself. Tom had been Father Christmas for years and delighted in handing out gifts to the little tackers at the annual ‘Old Bastards’ bash. Tom was very ill and so weak he “could’t blow the froth off a fosters” when into the breach stepped you guessed it of course, Roy. The only thing he needed to do was dye the face fungus to a sort of silver white and Bob’s yer Uncle….hey presto….. Santa.
Roy who was twenty eight years old at the time enjoyed the role so much he did it for the next forty eight years. Poor Tom McGuiness never blew the top off another Fosters or anything else as he passed away before Easter the following year and Roy just sort of took over.
For forty eight years Roy donned the hot red suit, the red extended beannie style hat, with pom pom of course, practised his ho ho ho’s, though he didn’t really need the practice.
He made the dreams and some of the wishes of generations of kids come true and even better, he made them feel the magic of Christmas. He was real, he was Santa. Oh he didn’t actually live at the North Pole, he didn’t even know one elf, and reindeer were something for picture postcard or Laplanders in Norhtern Europe. But he did have a Mrs. Clause…. err Mrs clomp and she was a shade portly some might say ‘a bit of a pudding’ herself.
Roy Clomp and his bride were loved and even revered by generations of children and their parents whether it was holding court in the local pub during the year or ho ho ho’ing up a storm in the ten days before Christmas in halls, local parks and on a dreadfully tacky old sleighd pulled along behind the ‘Old Bastards’s’ Presidents beat up old Chev impala.
They didn’t go to church much except for the odd wedding or christening, they preferred to go fishing or off camping in the bush on weekends, they didn’t belong to any service clubs except the ‘old bastards’ They went to the pictures on Tuesdays till pay TV came along . Their children grew up, grew away.
Roy even died in August 2009, just enough time to find another Santa.
Ah!…. the man was dedicated.
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY