Dear Santa

Dear Santa

I have been a good girl this year, well, most of the time anyway if you overlook a few arguments with trolls and other idiots. I’ve already managed to get most of the things on my wish list, such as the new version of Larousse, and Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck Cookbook, a few cans of Guinness, and a bag of fun-size Mars bars. I even got a Henckels professional knife recently, and a new pair of trousers to replace my threadbare 10-year-old Primark ones. So it’s not as though I really want for much.

But there are some very exclusive things that I just can’t find in my usual haunts (mostly Thailand and Malaysia), so I thought I’d write to you. A visit from you would be terrific but you’ll need to come in through the door as my house doesn’t have a chimney, and I don’t think you’d be slim enough to enter via the air-conditioning ducts.

So here’s my list, which I think you’ll agree is fairly modest.

• A bag (or two or three) of Twiglets
• A few Cadbury’s Flakes so I can make some 99s for friends
• An Arbroath smokie – but I think that’s really too much to hope for

Of course, I’d like a million pounds, a full-time personal assistant to sort out my emails (urgh!), a car and driver, the house next door which I could turn into a superb kitchen and photo studio, some freebie luxury hotel stays or cooking master classes. I would also like a transporter beam thing (like they have in Star Trek) so I wouldn’t have to fly on Air Asia so often. I would like an extra tap in the kitchen which serves up Guinness just like the existing one gushes out water. A full-sized snooker table would be nice too, but I’d settle for a decent pool table. A Thora Hird stair-lift kind of thing might be useful too, as I’ve hurt my back lifting heavy bags on our most recent travels. Hey! A gorgeous, strapping hunk to carry my bags everywhere would be nice as well.

But I do understand that you’re very busy and probably also affected by the credit crunch, so I would be ecstatic with glee if you could even manage the Twiglets.

Thank you for reading. I’ll be sure to have the Bailey’s and mince pies ready for you and a few nice crunchy carrots for Rudolph and the team.

Love from

Not Delia