Christmas is coming...

You know that Christmas is on the way when the annuals, selection boxes and Terrys Chocolate Oranges start to appear in ASDA. I don't think that they are bringing the season earlier in particular, it is just that since they expanded the store the warehouse ended up correspondingly smaller so we now have visible storage areas in the seasonal aisles. There is about 50 yards worth of Halloween tat which will no doubt disappear very quickly on November 1st, to be replaced by Xmas tat.

The Morley Christmas lights are up but fortunately not yet lit. I imagine that the Council gets Morley out of the way before tackling the much more ambitious Leeds Lights, a sort of mini-blackpool round the City Centre without the smell of candy floss and sick (apart from Giro day, of course).

Top tip for enjoying the Blackpool Illuminations- Park in the South big car park and catch a tram from near the Pleasure Beach or the Sandcastle at about 45 minutes before the published switch-on time. You want to travel to the Cabin, but if you arrive with time to spare get off at Bispham and walk back past the Tableaux to where they start (just slightly after the Cabin.)

The lights will start more-or-less at the appointed time and you will be travelling in the opposite direction to the crowds. Once you have enjoyed all of the tableaux, hop on a near-empty tram and enjoy the lights all the way back to the Pleasure Beach. (The LED sphere light tree on a real tree in the centre of the Gynn Square roundabout is particularly pretty). This has worked on both occasions in recent years, any other deviation from this plan will be somewhat fraught, e.g. driving along the Prom or trying to board a tram anywhere along the route in the first few hours after switch-on.

This year was slightly marred by the double decker tram windows being absolutely filthy and also some Burberry Boy behind us assuming that we all shared his taste in mobile phone music. (It might have sounded fine through a hi-fi rather than a half inch piezo speaker but I still wasn't interested in being subjected to it without discussion). However, the mood was lifted when we saw the Green Machine tableau complete with solar panels and windmill working overtime- a fountain effect at the top right became instantly recognisable as a MacDonalds Golden Arch as it went through the sequence, something the Greenies would have been aghast about had they spotted the symbolism. It wasn't yellow but even david spotted it!

Back to Yorkshire, I have heard that the Morley Switch-on is on November 23rd at 7pm which is a little over four weeks away so that we can start working ourselves up to a frenzy in anticipation. Hopefully Morley FM will be involved again, we understand that our very own Charlie Keith may be hosting it but there are conflicting reports about whether Real radio will be participating again.

Another sign of an impending Christmas- Spam starts to turn up about Santa!

By the way, Morley had another Continental Market at the start of October but I don't think anyone noticed...