The Chimney Climbing class was going quite well until Ethel got stuck. She put it down to fluid retention, but I suspect it had more to do with testing the early mince pies. We decided an exercise bicycle and a corset would meet the case, and we’ve taken her off the kitchen job. It was difficult to find her a suitable new role, and it is a pity as she does make very good pastry, but she was very good about it and is now zipping about organising the large parcel packing department which keeps her well out of temptation. It has the added advantage that the warehouse is very big and she needs to walk up and down it quite a lot and I have seen to it that the spare fork lift truck is out of action - I put rather a lot of the Christmas pudding that fell on the floor last week into the exhaust pipe, and that seemed to do the trick, especially when I added a bag of currants to the fuel tank to make sure. The rest of the class are coming along splendidly, especially Florence – Father Edmund says she shows quite unusual aptitude, but he is worried about the possibiity of the soot ruining her hearing aid.
Reindeer management is an issue as most of the Mother Christmases have only ever dealt with very young deer or the ones who are sick, and I have noticed that some of the adult reindeer do have an attitude problem. They are used to working just with their own FC and I can see that they won’t take readily to change. We have discussed possible solutions to this, the obvious one being increasing the Brussels sprouts allowance, but that does have some unfortunate consequences, especially with the more mature reindeer. Anyway, the upshot was that I should work on Rudolph to try and win him over as he is the one they tend to follow most these days. If we can pull him round, the rest should follow.
The main remaining difficulty is what we do about the FCs themselves?
Reindeer management is an issue as most of the Mother Christmases have only ever dealt with very young deer or the ones who are sick, and I have noticed that some of the adult reindeer do have an attitude problem. They are used to working just with their own FC and I can see that they won’t take readily to change. We have discussed possible solutions to this, the obvious one being increasing the Brussels sprouts allowance, but that does have some unfortunate consequences, especially with the more mature reindeer. Anyway, the upshot was that I should work on Rudolph to try and win him over as he is the one they tend to follow most these days. If we can pull him round, the rest should follow.
The main remaining difficulty is what we do about the FCs themselves?