Wednesday, 27 October 2021

There Ain't No Sanity Clause

Every year or so a couple of Fester’s oldest friends, Mr and Mrs Orange, come up to Newcastle for a partly nostalgic visit.  Mr Orange and Fester played cricket together as undergraduates and for some years they would all spend New Year with another friend from their uni days, Mr Monkshood, in Hastings.  Whenever they come up they try to get together for lunch and possibly an evening in the pub.

A few years ago we arranged to meet for lunch in The Lantern café, which used to be in part of 

St Nicholas Cathedral.  It was an old chapel, with the most wonderful ceiling and windows, very quiet with good, plain, food.

As usual Fester was early but The Lantern wasn’t the easiest place to find and we'd arranged to show them the way.  So we were happy to sit in the cathedral square and appreciate the view.

After a while two smartly dressed young ladies approached us.

“We are from a far away country” said one in an Eastern European accent “please could we have our photo taken with you?”

They meant him not us “because you look so like St Nicholas, Santa Claus you know...” 

From Facebook archives

19 October 2019
Newcastle Kingsmen, Hammersmith & Sallyport Birthday Weekend – Mr Whyte and Fester

Bentonbag @Mrs Leftfoot - Just bumped into and stopped to chat with my childminder neighbour up the street.  Fester bustled past on his way to the shops and made some comment about 'wimmin in strange hats'

So I called out "Well at least I don't have strangers asking to have photographs with Santa Clause".
Mrs Childminder says "Oh I use him to threaten my children with.  When he goes past I tell them he's off duty, but I know him and tell him all about the naughty things they do."
So it’s not just you Mrs Leftfoot
Mrs Leftfoot  Ha! Ha! It's a lovely photo of Mr Whyte and Santa.

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