Santa wore a Harley Davidson Jacket

It was a typically humid Christmas Eve, its stifling atmosphere stinging their eyes and drying out their throats. So, it was a relief for Aimee and Jo to get out of that department store into the freshening mid-afternoon air where they joined the thousands rumbling in formation up and down New Street. This was the closest Birmingham ever got to resembling the great wildebeest migrations of Africa!
‘HO! HO! HO!’ A Santa Claus clutching a bundle of Boxing Day Flyers chatted to an elf, ‘Tell you what, my mate. If they pick up something on Friday on – We’re definitely automatically promoted.’
‘Number seven,’ whispered Jo prodding her friend’s shoulder. They had been counting the Father Christmases from one end of New Street to the other as they zigzagged efficiently through the crowds.
Pausing for frothy coffee and hot paninis they stood at a bar with store bags gathered like obedient dogs around their feet.
‘The shopping’s wrapped up – apart from the wrapping up,’ joked Aimee. Dad’s stuff from Debenhams, mum’s from House of Fraser, brothers’ from Zavvi and Game, sister’s from Selfridges.
‘Still Nathan to do,’ mentioned Jo, pointing in the direction of the Mailbox. Her fella wouldn’t have anything from anywhere else.
‘Your Jem is easier to buy for,’ she added.
‘Yeah,’ sighed Aimee, ‘get him anything from Marks, soon as he opens it he wants to know where the receipt is so he can change it.’
Once Nathan’s cashmere jumper was in the bag, Jo suggested they walk back to the car via the canal. A purple curtain of night had now closed across the theatre of last-minute shopping; its dramas, delights and disappointments over for another year.

They passed beautified glow-worms of barges rocking with party animals.
‘Those old boats are really just the lorries and aeroplanes of yesterday,’ pondered Aimee.
‘You can’t imagine people in a hundred years time wanting to live in articulated Lorries,’ offered Jo.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Jem’s been known to sleep in his van when they’re coming back from one of his gigs,’ answered Aimee, waiting for a laugh that didn’t come.
Jo was gazing at a figure striding purposely along the towpath. ‘Eight,’ she triumphantly announced. Aimee argued ‘he’ didn’t count. She insisted a Santa Claus in red hat and costume – and Harley Davidson leather jacket and motorcycle boots, couldn’t possibly be counted as a real Father Christmas.
They turned to watch him then looked at each other and burst into hysterics. They were both twenty-eight years old and discussing what is or isn’t a real Santa Claus. The disputed Santa spun round in the direction of the hysterics.
Then he turned back, wobbled a bit and …SPLASH!
‘Oh!’ gasped Aimee.
‘Oh my goodness!’ gasped Jo more emphatically.
They dropped their bags and rushed to where the calm reflected lights on the water broke into disturbed ripples. The cause of the ripples waved his arms and shouted, or to be precise half-shouted, half-gurgled.
The women crouched at the water’s edge extending their straight arms towards his flapping ones. There was a gap of more than a metre between their warm gloved hands and his wet cold ones. Jo stretched, overstretched, and heard a rip.
‘Help!’ Aimee shouted
Other people appeared: A couple struggling with big bags and small kids, a mob of red-faced drinkers, and a trio of young women in fancy dress (French maid, Christmas fairy, naughty schoolgirl) with glittery antlers on their heads. Enough arms extended to form a human octopus, but Santa was getting farther and farther away towards the other side of the canal.
A red-faced drinker, until now acting in a frankly unhelpful supervisory manner, blurted, ‘Hang about. He’s not drowning – he’s swimming.’ And he was swimming, to the far bank and back towards them in a perfectly adequate freestyle. The human tentacles helped him out and eased him onto the dry of the gravel path.
‘Call an ambulance.’
‘Wrap him up or he’ll get hypothermia.’
‘Why’s he dressed as Father Christmas?’ muttered the one dressed as a Christmas fairy.
The Santa, about the same age as Aimee and Jo, wiped his eyes. The two women felt responsible. Had it not been for their laughing …
‘That was our fault, wasn’t it,’ coyly enquired Jo.
‘Uh, Nah. Just one of those accidents,’ he reassured her.
Aimee asked if he wanted to go to a hospital to get checked over. ‘No, I’m fine.’ Jo asked if she could phone anyone for him. ‘No. I’m … okay, I think.’ Aimee offered to drop him home; she was parked just round the corner. Where did he live? ‘I’m from Edgbaston.’ That wasn’t far from Aimee and Jo’s flat. Where in Edgbaston was it? ‘I don’t live there anymore. I moved to Kingstanding.’ That was much farther away, way over the north side of the city, but they could do it. They couldn’t just leave him there in his drenched leather jacket and Santa outfit. ‘I don’t live there now.’
The women, now concerned, glanced at each other. There was a blank, I’m here but I’m not all there, look in his eyes. Had he hit his head on something when he fell into the canal? Aimee stared closely at him. She’d trained as a nurse, been trained to spot symptoms.
‘What’s, er, WHAT … IS … YOUR … NAME?’
He didn’t reply. She tried again, ‘Where do you live now?’
They briefly considered looking through his pockets or shoulder bag for a wallet or anything that could identify him. Instead, Jo silently mouthed the word ‘hospital’ and Aimee nodded in agreement. They helped him to his feet and up the steps at the end of the towpath to Aimee’s parked Clio. They guided him into the back seat. What a way to spend Christmas they thought peering into the rear-view mirror at the soaking wet man sprawled inelegantly, rambling incoherently. He rambled more to himself than to his rescuers. They thought they could pick up, ‘What was I supposed to do tonight?’
‘Mild amnesia I think,’ murmured Aimee. Probably the shock, Jo murmured back.
Talking of shock, Aimee convulsed, ‘The booze!’ in all the excitement she’d forgotten to buy the drink to distribute among the small army of aunts and uncles who’d be congregating at her parents house the following afternoon. She dropped a gear to look out for somewhere and spotted an off-license. Jo followed to give her a hand. She examined the tear under the arm of her coat, ‘Good job the sales start in a couple of days.’
Thumbing over her shoulder towards the car, Aimee remarked ‘Did you hear him going on about tigers or something.’ Jo shook her head, ‘I expect he’s had a drink or two dozen himself today.’
They scooped up bottles, plumping for stuff they just knew tipsy aunties and uncles slumped in front of the Queen and The Queen Vic’ would sagely approve of and rushed out to where they had parked by a litter bin on the kerb. The kerb was still there. So was the bin. The car wasn’t. Momentary wide-jawed disbelief turned to urgent pragmatism. Numbers were hastily dialled; partners, family, police.
Thankfully they’d kept their bags with them so cards and keys and cash hadn’t gone. But it was too late to replace all the presents in the boot. For the second time that afternoon they exchanged the thought; what a way to spend Christmas. Nathan collected them, tut-tutting the whole journey home as they explained the stolen car and the soaking Santa.

Anthony still believed in Father Christmas and the illuminated magic of the season. There were few people in his life, no family apart from his twin brother overseas. Despite being born only hours apart they didn’t look anything like each other. It was due to lack of oxygen or something. Anthony remained as a five-year old throughout his teens and now through most of his twenties.
His brother Eamonn grew up differently but always seemed unhappy until he rode off to America. Anthony thought himself ‘the lucky one’. He looked younger than Eamonn; he didn’t have the lined forehead of a troubled mind or the baggy eyes of sleepless nights.
There was only one night of the year he found it difficult to sleep in his room at the sheltered housing complex. That was tonight; Christmas Eve. The night when just before seven o’clock he would see Santa walk across the lawn with his present.
He kneeled on his bed staring intently out of the window ignoring the other residents partying downstairs. His unblinking eyes fixed on a patch of lawn lit by the streetlight over the fence. He was lucky. Children never see the real Santa because they look in the wrong place – the sky. Eamonn had told him not to look up there. He said you can’t see a massive jumbo jet in the dark so you’re hardly likely to see an old man on a sleigh being pulled by reindeer.
The clock on the wall beat round to seven, then five past, then Anthony saw a car juddering to a stop on the lawn and Santa diving out pulling the present out of his shoulder bag. Santa ran along the lawn fiddling with his beard, thin and straggly this year not fat and fluffy as usual. From his window Anthony couldn’t see the main entrance to the complex but he knew Santa would leave the present on the step and press the buzzer to alert the nurse. He already knew what the present was; a big Tigger. He’d especially asked for it when Eamonn visited in the summer. Anthony didn’t write so Eamonn wrote to Santa for him.
He watched Santa run off past the car and climb over the fence onto the street. He was puzzled. Then he saw a police car pull up and two policemen get out and walk around Santa’s car. One policeman took the keys from the open driver’s door and unlocked the boot. Then he spoke into his walkie-talkie.

In the flat, Jo, Nathan, Aimee’s dad and Jem quietened when Aimee answered the call.
‘They’ve found it!’ she burst out excitedly, every frowning muscle in her face suddenly transformed into a glowing beam.
‘Burnt out, I bet,’ sighed Nathan.
‘No, it’s fine and all the presents are still there. Everything’s there – except for ‘him’.’
Nathan drove them to the complex, tut-tutting throughout the journey. Jem continued to repeat the same line he’d been using since he’d heard about the theft: ‘Actually, it’s more common for Father Christmas to bring presents than take them away. You must have been a naughty girl this year. Hur! Hur! Hur!’
Aimee’s dad hoped it wouldn’t get too serious between the two of them.
At the scene the women checked their bags of shopping, all present and correct. But, there were more bags on the back seat. Aimee and Jo opened them. One contained a new coat. Not bad, though typical of what a guy would choose for a woman. Other bags contained perfumes, chocolates, and gift sets for both male and female. ‘We didn’t buy any of this,’ exclaimed Jo shrilly. ‘He must have done it,’ gasped Aimee. Jem pulled at a bag and disdainfully examined its contents, ‘If this is for me I’m taking it right back to change it.’
A policeman took a soggy card from under the windscreen wipers and read out a scrawled message: ‘SORRY. My bike broke down and I had to do something tonight – hope the coat and stuff is okay.’

Anthony, kneeling on his bed, watched the scene outside. There were lots of people with condensation coming out of their mouths, looking like they were talking to each other in Red Indian smoke signals. Because they all seemed so happy he decided the car must be Santa’s present to them. Then he went to bed knowing he wouldn’t sleep tonight. He’d lie awake trying to remember everything so he could tell his brother Eamonn when he arrived on his motorbike for Christmas in the morning.