PUPILS at Lewannick Primary School have been very busy writing letters to Father Christmas — after a few presents that fell from his sleigh during a recent test run were given to the school!

Around six weeks ago, pupils were stunned to find some beautifully wrapped presents at school and a letter from one of the jolly man’s helpers, Elfred, head of Elf Services.

The letter explained that during a routine training run, Father Christmas and his team experienced a code ‘OOPS’ incident.

The letter read: “For those not familiar with such matters, code OOPs relates to precious, parcels, perilously, plummeting without prior permissions, due to obvious lack of proper organisation of parcels… meaning — some were placed rather oddly and overbalanced during a scheduled high speed sleigh acceleration.”

It said due to ‘elf and safety regulations’ — North Pole Act 1893 (Clause 3) — the items could not be returned to the sleigh ‘as the excessive amount of official, pointless paperwork involved could well mean Christmas having to be seriously delayed or possibly even cancelled!’

As the items that fell overboard were said to be consigned for distribution in Cornwall, Clause 203 of OOPS legislation was executed. Mr Clause stuck a pin firmly into a map of Cornwall. Slap bang into — Lewannick School!

The presents were delivered to the school for special distribution.

Having checked back through his archive of particularly well-written letters Father Christmas said he was rather pleased to see that one of his favourite was from a child taught at Lewannick School, who kindly enquired about his year before requesting not only most of the toys from the 2001 Argos catalogue but also world peace!

The pupils were then asked to write in their neatest and most descriptive writing why they would like or deserve one of the presents.

Letters were put in the special collection box for Father Christmas to read before Christmas Eve.

Higher level teaching assistant Jacquie Maynard said: “Santa has had an ‘OOPS’ incident! The children have been writing letters to say why they should get a present.

“There is great excitement and all the presents have been well squished!”