onionbagblog

Remember those blizzard blowing days back in the Great Winter of, um, 2010? Snow drifts from Broad Lane down to Wivenhoe Bookshop, I tell you. The conditions provided either the perfect picture postcard backdrop for the turning on of the Wivenhoe Christmas lights, or a right bloody pain in the backside, depending on your point of view.

I personally took the opportunity of the trains being buggered to go on holiday in Wivenhoe by mistake. Most other commuters took the very same strategic decision.

And so in these balmy days of the fag end of the Indian summer, why the chuffers is he bangin’ on about bloody Christmas?

Comrades: news reaches me of the date for the grand turning on of the Wivenhoe Christmas Lights, 2011. Thursday 1st December is the diary date - if these don’t turn you on then you ‘aint got no switches. St Mary’s will become an illicit meeting place for the North Essex wing of Illumination Nymphomaniacs.

See you there, Madam.

St Mary’s of course will also become the setting for the traditional late night shopping and Christmas Market. If local traders can put in the extra effort to open all hours, then I like to think that even my penny-pinching ways can lend a little support.

That will be a double jumbo saveloy for me at Papa’s, then.

Ahead of the Big Turn On, I hear that a reckie has already been carried out on the cupola at St Mary’s. Some quite stunning photographs have also been sourced, including the capturing on camera of the latest little visitors to the wonky Wivenhoe tower of fun.

Awwww.

They won’t last the big freeze.

As for the snow itself? Short of shipping in some fake snow to add some arctic ambience to the occasion, my scientific method of licking my finger, pointing it in the direction of Fingringhoe and allowing the Fairy Weather Gods to fill my mind of what is to come, rather rationally informs me that… it’s gonna get colder.

Cripes.

What we need is an ever-helpful Wivenhoe Town Council to pour boiling hot oils down every back passage (steady) around the town. What we’ve actually got is an ever-helpful Wivenhoe Town Council that under extreme financial restrictions is already organising the ordering of grit.

Grrrrreat.

I have been told that access routes will be prioritied - Valley Road and Queens Road are apparently high up on the list (although access to the latter is strictly a hush hush affair, but the dip is a bit of a bugger and I certainly wouldn’t fancy landing on my arse right in front of the good folk of the Queens Road Resident’s Association - snow or no snow.)

So yeah, Wivenhoe: the countdown has started to the Great Turn On.

Buzzing, me.