It was the word zastruga, played in a scrabble tournament that started it all. Someone challenged it – but there it was, in the Scrabbler’s Dictionary, listed as an alternative spelling to sastruga, meaning “a wavelike ridge of hard snow formed by the wind — usually used in plural”.

“There you are!” the Missus told me. “You ought to have used sastrugi, then, which is after all the word Robert Falcon Scott used in Journals: Captain Scott’s Last Expedition (“Over the sastrugi it is all up and down hill, and the covering of ice crystals prevents the sledge from gliding even on the down-grade...”). She always quotes chapter and verse at me, especially when she’s in the wrong. “And...” she said, as if that clinched the argument, “it’s the spelling that appears in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.”

Of course, she said this because zastruga fetched me all of 68 points, and with sastrugi I would have obtained a mere 59 points. Alas, I had no double or triple letters, or double or triple word scores, in which case I would have got more. But the letter z alone gave me ten points, whereas the s would only have given me one.

In order to diffuse the situation, one of Them, whom I had happened to invited for lunch, said “Hey, listen to this – it says here that Inuit call the part of iceberg below waterline an ilulisap itsirnga, but the iceberg itself is an iluliaq, not an ilulisap.” Then, with a feeble attempt at humour, he added “How cool is that?”

At this point I will just pause insert a non sequitur. December 19 is Separation Day in Anguilla, commemorating Anguilla's separation from St Kitts & Nevis. So dinner was pumpkin soup, and crayfish with cilantro and plantains. Boy, am I glad the Missus didn’t cook curried goat.

I was nearly forgetting to tell the reason why one of Them was visiting. My point was that since I was not the real Santa, it would not do for me to wear red; the colour does not suit me, anyway. I wanted a nice, pale blue outfit that matches my eyes. The Missus made a choking sound similar to that the goat would have done, had it been curried, and asked where on earth there had been a Santa wearing a blue outfit.

Ah! It seems that I won this round, too, as well as the Scrabble one. Because my archaeology newsletter recently reported that in Akron, Ohio, the world’s oldest statuette of Santa has just been unearthed... and he is wearing... blue.

Bingo! Or rather, Scrabble!
This 2.5inches high “Wishing Santa” penny toy figurine was made in about 1884 by The American Marble & Toy Manufacturing Company, which burned to the ground in 1904, now known as the "Lock 3 Park" archaeological site... The idea behind it was that, held in one’s hands while a formula was uttered, it would help the person using it to obtain what he wanted for come Christmas.

“Oh, Santa; I’ve been a very good boy this year. I would like....” thus was the modus operandi. It would not do harm to ask for things for pesky little brothers, either, since this would inform all those within earshot that you were a nice, caring, brother. It was not necessary for every member of the family to have his own Santa, or even a new one. As long as the wish was spoken loudly enough for grandparents with ear trumpets, like the one used by Rene's mother-in-law in ‘Allo ‘Allo, to hear, the charm ought to have worked...