GETTING ready for Christmas? For me its different now. Better? Easier? Dearer? More exciting? Difficult to say really.

When I was little all I had to do was ask one of my brothers to help me write a letter to Santa listing the things I would like to get on Christmas morning. Then we would all wait with bated breath to see if the letters would go up the chimney, taken up by the draught from the fire.

If they soared up, success! If they burned and dropped back down, it meant a serious pencil chewing rewrite, because we were obviously asking for too much (I realised later that we had been carefully conditioned to not ask for things that we'd no chance of getting, so that we wouldn't be disappointed).

The trimmings would be brought out, and we knew where each bit went. Then the rather scratty tree would be decorated. New candles would be put in the little clamp holders that clung to the end of the branches, funny that we didn't think it was dangerous, but loved it when we had them all lit at Christmas.

Christmas Eve afternoon would be the big shopping day. The butchers all brightly lit, would have geese, turkeys and cock chickens, still with the heads on, hung up outside.

In the window would be pigs heads grinning (though what they had to grin about I don't know) with a big orange stuck in their mouths. Food had to be bought at the last minute, no fridges and kept in the larder on a big stone shelf.

Then the big day, a big dinner, an even bigger wash up. Is it any wonder my mum fell asleep afterwards, all that work? Mind you it could have been the sherry!

Boxing Day, big football match, my mum came from Bury, and my dad from Manchester, so if the Rovers were playing either of those towns, relatives would descend en masse.

The parlour had to be opened up, that meant the bikes had to go in the yard, fire lit, a big tidy up, and cries of 'I don't care if its Christmas you'll get a thick ear if you don't do as you are told.' Great days.

You know as children we were smacked, but I never doubted that my mum and dad loved us. And horror of horrors I smacked mine, didn't beat them, didn't flog them, but I must confess to the quick clip, or the odd slap. Personally I feel that children know when they are pushing their luck and that they constantly try to. I know I did.

And we all need to know, so far and no further.

Don't you dare touch that electric fire! Accompanied by a small tap on the hand, this I would imagine has stopped a lot of toddlers getting their fingers burnt.

We're now into a third decade of 'let them learn by themselves' and where has it got us? It's landed a lot of young people with not much self esteem and not much sense of what's okay what isn't.

Anyway enough of all that, it's nearly the magic time. I for one am going to shake off dull care and really enjoy myself.