Read on Twitter
Something lovely happened today so I thought I'd share it. We haven’t always been managing to get out for walks, what with schoolwork and my work, but today I was determined, and the sun was shining. We took our litter pickers with us and headed out.
A few streets from home, a man asked what we were doing and we said we were picking up rubbish. He said ‘Here’s some rubbish for you’ and dropped a £2 coin on the floor. The kids were so excited.
We turned a corner and I sent my 7yo into a bush to get a Crunchie wrapper I couldn’t reach. A man came out of his house. My 7yo nudged me and whispered ‘Santa’. We’d seen this same man when we were out walking on Christmas Eve.
He has a long white beard and he’d been dressed as Santa, and the kids were convinced he was the real deal. Today, we noticed that he still had a Christmas tree up outside his house. He asked what we were doing.
I said we were picking up rubbish and looking for cats (there had been quite a lot of looking for cats). He asked if we’d seen any small Labradors. We said no. He took a soft toy dog from behind his back and threw it in the direction of the kids. So much excitement.
As soon as he went back inside, the kids exploded with theories about how Santa likes to give toys away sometimes even when it isn’t Christmas, and how the man who’d given them the money must have been an elf.
It made a lockdown school day into something magical. And we all need a bit of magic right now. The kids have called the dog Nick (after St Nicholas) and negotiated shared custody. This is him.
