Dalekboy

Now last year I did Preston Market. That was more hours than Dandenong, a much bigger area (because it also incorporated two blocks of High St, both sides of the road) and only two days off in two weeks. And I handled it fine.

Generally, I try to post as soon as possible after a good days Santa-ing. ( Cut for a long, boring account of unaccountable tiredness that you really don't need to read. )
Oh well, maybe tomorrow I can visit a beach or hospital if I'm up to it after the family lunch. For tonight, this is the most energy I'm likely to expend.

Cheers, my dears,
I hope you all have (and had) a lovely Christmas Eve and a wonderful Chrissy Day.

Danny

Well, each of the two days of Santa-ing at Dandenong Market have left me totally knackered. The warmer suit combined with a job where I pretty much walk around for three and a half hours mean I'm hitting the sack around nine-thirty every night. I've taken the outside sheds, Bob has the inside. He's an old guy with bad legs, so keeping him out of the direct sun seemed the best thing to do. Though it also means that I have the bigger, and in some ways more interesting, area to wander.

Stall-holders at Dandenong seem generally less grasping and greedy when compared to some of the folks at Preston last year. There are still those who are demanding stuff, but there seems to be less of them and they seem less pushy and unpleasant than the Preston folks. Don't get me wrong, there were some lovely and very generous folks at Preston, but they were very much in the minority. At Dandenong it's probably about even.

Couple of highlights from the last day or so. James the busker. Every time I passed him he started singing Chrissy songs. As they were ones I knew, I'd sing with him. It was great fun. My favourite was singing with James and having a little girl dancing away in front of us.

And the other fav was the old woman that came up and asked if I could pose with her for her husband, who had some sort of video camera. She said they were Dutch, holidaying down here. I mentioned that she'd know me better as Sinterklaas and she paused for a moment, decoding my awful pronunciation, then broke into a huge grin. Then I waved to the hubby at the camera, shrugged my shoulders and said I didn't know where Black Pete was. I watched his realisation and joy that I knew a little about the Dutch Chrissy tradition, albeit in a basic sense, and got a big happy smile.

Have I said how much I love this job?

I'm still tired today and I have to drive to today's job in costume because there's nowhere for me to change at the venue. So that will be tiring, however on the plus side, Father Christmas will be tooling around Melbourne in a 1970 Holden with TYPE 40 on the number plates.

How cool is that?

Just some shots from my last few jobs for those that are interested. Funlands (of was it Funfields?) and Werribee Zoo (and a Santa-free shot from the Butterfly House at Melbourne Zoo). Also, there will be a special friends only collection of behind the scenes shots... stay tuned! ( Photos below cut )

My Melton job has been cancelled! Grrrrrrrrrr...

It was the first job I was given for the year, I got it back in bloody July! Santa's Magical Arrival! I've been looking forward to this one for months. It's a four hour round trip to do it, but I didn't care because I loved working at Woodgrove.

And that bloody Magician is what has cost me the job. ( Cut for some very unSanta-ly thoughts )

It's not a bad ol' place to be Santa. Kids of all nationalities being hugely enthusiastic/terrified out of their wits by the big fat man in red. Don't have much to report, but do have piccies of two of my current workmates.

( Pics below cut... )

Well, did some Santa-ing today in Richmond at the Village Garden shopping centre. It was good. Got to wander about and give out chocolates and talk to kids. Then at about 1:30pm KMart launched the wishing tree. They got the kids from Brighton St Primary School to sing. Which was especially nice for me as I used to go to Brighton street, back in the dim dark days when it was spitting distance from Richmond Abattoirs. *happy sigh*

Not much else to say. There's a piccie of myself and the kids below the cut.

( Here there be piccies.... )

Gave the suit a test run today. Very nice.

( Father Chrissy piccie below cut )

Today I went to Santa training. In theory I didn't need to, having done it last year and gotten lots of great feedback, but I take my Santa-ing seriously and figured I may pick up a few tricks.

It was good, there was only a handful of us there, but it was kind of nice to get to talk to other Santas. Traded hints and tips with the others and went through the basics again as a refresher. Father Christmas couldn't make it himself, so instead we had David. He's been a Santa for the Entertainment store for seven years and is great. Clever, funny and knows his stuff.

They wanted to give us a run-through of being Santa, with David playing a little boy. For a big guy, he captured the spirit of the part well and gave each of us a hairy time in completely different ways. For me he was the insanely curious kid, asking question after question without giving me space for a breath. I've had one or two of these, hard to deal with but not too bad, and I handled him pretty well.

I really like working for the Entertainment Store, good people all around.

The second-best news is, they gave us our Santa suits! So I've got mine waiting in the wardrobe for my first job. It'll give me a chance to do some test runs, because every Santa suit is slightly different.

The best news is, I shall soon have my very own Santa suit!
Last time I spoke to them I asked about buying one off them. They have their own costume people and Matt asked them if they could do me one and yep, they can. So I'm going to have a Santa suit made. Yay! By a guy who has worked for Madonna! Think I'll avoid the pointy-chest look though.

I've wanted one for a while for a few different reasons. One, I want to be able to play Santa not just for work stuff, but for freinds and family. Two, it's nice to have a spare for when small children spew on me. Three, I want one. Four, I really, really want one. And five, I would have needed one for Santa's tonight show, North Pole Tonight, at Swancon next year. And it's so much better to have my own.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Well ok, one person emailed. She was curious to see more piccies of yours truly in his guise as Father Christmas. Never one to turn down a gorgeous lady here they are!

( Santa Dan returns... )

Treated myself today by getting my car cleaned. It was rather amusing, as the main young bloke to work on it couldn't figure out the immobiliser, then couldn't figure out the gears (he hadn't noticed the clutch) and then kept stalling it. hehehe

So my brmmm brmmm is all sparkly and gleaming again after having driven it over to Perth, then up to Uluru and home again. Yay! Though it still has a bootful of red dust from the Hyden/Norseman road.

Today was a tough day of Santa-ing. The suit ups your temperature enough that you sweat in an air conditioned shopping centre, so you can imagine what I was like on a 35 degree day. I was literally dripping sweat. Just think, some people pay good money to clean out their pores in steam rooms, meanwhile I get paid to exude moisture.
I still have a slight dehydration headache, but I had a fun day as St. Nick. The kids were good, I refused to give a stall holder a lolly since she snatched one from my hand yesterday and I got to drawer winners out of a barrel in a competition that no-one seemed at all enthusiastic about.

Spoke to a woman yesterday who had just had all her Chrissy presents stolen. As she said "You hear about it all the time on the news, but this time it's me." She was reasonably chipper about it, happy that her son was too young to realise. Gave her a big hug and a lollipop, it's all I could do.

I've had one stall holder give my elf and I fruit every day, which is very kind. It came in handy yesterday when I was giving lollipops to some kids and one looked at the proffered sweetie and said he couldn't have it because the red food colouring makes him really sick. So I dropped it back in the bag and pulled out an apple and got a good smile :) Yay!

Well, I'm off to drink my fourth litre of water for the day