Christmas Fairy Tale

This morning (Sunday) I had the rare luxury of doing whatever I liked. I therefore settled down to read: A Landmark Week – and every one of the eighteen Weekly Blog Club posts – ‘cover to cover’. If you haven’t already discovered Weekly Blog Club, I strongly recommend giving it a go – there’s something in there to suit every taste.

As you’d expect at this time of year, several bloggers had chosen a seasonal theme for their post this week:

• My Advent Challenge by Ben Whitehouse
• My well-travelled Christmas Tree by Kate Bentham
• I wish it could be Christmas every day….. by Carol Woolley

In my previous post, I said I would continue on about open data, but it’s a dry subject, and I’ve decided to get festive this week instead. After all, it is that time of year.

This is my Christmas Fairy Tale.

There b e-fairies

It began a couple of weeks ago: 28th November, to be precise.

I received an email purporting to be from a fairy at the North Pole. I paid little attention, assuming it was spam that had somehow made it past the filter.

Perhaps it was a bit strange there were no links, promises of unlikely sums of money, or offers of huge growth (financial or otherwise). I’m sure I didn’t give it more than a moment’s thought.

The next day, there was another email, and another the following day. Colleagues started saying they’d been getting emails as well, and people began to speculate about who it was sending the notes which arrived without fail every morning.

Then, little details started creeping in to the emails, describing things that had happened in the office. It didn’t stop at emails either: stuff started happening. This fairy was real.

Uh oh, she’s real

Small gifts started appearing on desks: the odd chocolate here, a bauble there, sprinkles of snow, bits of tree*

There were even notes – personalised – containing instructions on how to build and decorate the tree.

There’s normally someone in the office from around 7am until at least 6pm most days.

Someone sure was was going to a lot of effort, both to buy or make the gifts, and also to make sure they weren’t seen.

The emails told stories of goblins and fairies, tipsy elves in the warehouse, ‘incidents’ with the egg nog, and little elfin hangovers**

‘D Day’

The emails counted down to ‘D Day’, causing some to worry that something bad was going to happen.

In the event, ‘D Day’ passed off peacefully, with nothing more than some empty bottles and sweet wrappers as evidence that the elves had partied whilst decorating the tree.

Postscript

We never found out who the Christmas Fairy was. Perhaps we’ll find out next year if she returns to sprinkle some fairy dust our way again. Let’s hope so.

Notes

• In case you were worried, it’s artificial, and no trees were harmed during the making of this programme.

** An elf with a hangover is easy to spot, as they have droopy ears and rheumy eyes