As you know, I’ve been having a great time in Africa over the past few months, but despite this, I’ve really been missing my family and friends back at home, especially so now given that Christmas is just around the corner.
So, on-the-spur of the moment, just yesterday in fact, I decided to do my cosmic cat trick and whiz back home, at almost the speed of light, to suprise everyone.
But this time, instead of flashing back around the world in no time at all, my curiosity got the better of me. And so I plucked up courage and made a diversion, which led me to whizzing off around the moon – the dark side of the moon that is – both for fun and also out of interest.
Wow! Whizzing’s amazing, but what I really noticed on this trip was how cold it was out there! Just as well I’ve got a triple thickness, Norwegian Forest Cat coat, I thought, giving myself a good shake. My whiskers were definitely no longer very bendy because it was so cold, and even my tail was feeling a bit stiff.
However, just as my whizzing started to take me off out around the dark side of the moon – so out of sight of all of you here on earth – something really interesting happened. I bumped into Santa in the gloom. Really I did! And you’ll be happy to hear that I didn’t cause any accidents by bumping into anyone, despite my speed!
‘What on earth are you doing all the way out here, Santa?’ I asked, laughing to myself a bit because, as we were on the far side of the moon, we couldn’t even see the earth!
‘Oh, I’m just having a bit of sledging practice with my four, frosty white reindeer, Graffi,’ he replied. ‘It’s cold up here, isn’t it?’
‘It sure is,’ I replied, giving myself another good shake. ‘Anyway, what are you all doing, hidden away up here in the depths of the darkness?’
‘We’re playing with torches and practicing for Christmas present deliveries,’ he said, with a gruff, 'ho ho,' escaping from his bushy beard. ‘And the reason we're here is that, because it's so dark and so the torches shine extra brightly, we wanted to make certain that no one could see us from down there,’ he added, pointing across towards where our blue planet was, but totally hidden away on the other side of the moon.
Thinking that it was probably better to leave them alone with their practicing - watching them playing was a bit like watching a Star Wars movie really - I gave the five of them a big wave, before shouting as I sped off, ‘See you soon and make sure you pop in for some yummy mince pies on your way by. They’ll be waiting for you up on the mantel piece. ’ But, because I was going so fast already, I never heard their replies.
Arriving back in our village, I had a bit of a bumpy landing and ended up at the edge of a carpark, after coming to a fun and skiddy halt in a large pile of snow. Over the top of this I found that each of the parking spaces were full of Christmas trees. Here they were being stocked carefully, in the places where the cars are usually parked. (This was because someone was giving the choice of lots of different sizes to different children and their families.) Anyway, while having a good look around the trees, I was surprised to come across my friend, Sparkles, under a rather large one. I’m sure you’ll remember Sparkles from my third book, Magic Graffi at the Honky Tonk Ball. He's our garden hedgehog, who’s also the local electrician.
‘Hello Sparkles,’ I said, almost making the mistake of giving him a huge and potentially painful (to me), happy holiday hug. ‘What a surprise to see you here. What are you up to?’
‘Getting some electric cable so as to attach your family’s Christmas lights to the tree that's just been delivered to them,’ he replied.
‘Ah, thanks for that, Sparkles,’ I replied. ‘Let me help you out.’ And in no time at all, off we both went back home, well wrapped around in wires.
Now, what you the reader doesn't know about me, is that I've always absolutely adored the scent of wild, freshly cut Christmas trees. I don’t know what it is about them exactly, but the strong scent they have gets me all excited and this makes me snuffle around at everything that that's attached to them.
So of course, as soon as I got home with Sparkles, while he was connecting wires, I was immediately buried in under the lovely thick branches, inhaling all the yummy smells wafting over the trunk and branches. In fact, I got so over excited that I climbed up the tree towards the star, which was the good news!
However, the bad news was that, after getting rather wobbly, it toppled over and I ended up with one of its stars stuck on the top of my head! To solve the problem my magic kicked in almost immeditaely. As usual, my tail went all sparkly blue, and the tree righted itself with enthusiasm, flashing brightly because of the magic. With my renewed and wonderful view from near the top of it, I could now see everyone arriving for the Christmas party, with lots of them remarking on me with the happy star clinging to my head.
And you won't be surprised to hear that I was incredibly thrilled when, later that night, the star told me that it had decide to come back to Africa with me in the very early morning. This was because, as we flew across space, it knew that many of the stars we would be passing would wave to my sparkly friend and sing, 'Stary, stary night.' Anyway, one last thing before I go . . .
I want to wish you an especially Happy Chrismas, and at the same time, I want to ask you please not to forget to be kind and really helpful to those around you who may well need a lot of your kindness and comfort, particularly right now so as to help cheer them up if life is difficult. Have fun and take care!
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