It is December 1969 in this picture and so I am three and half years old. It was taken in the Co-op Department Store on Parliament Street in Nottingham. As part of the queueing system that year you took a ride on a rocket ship to Santa's Grotto on the moon. So in this picture I think I am on the moon. The white cap is my complimentary Nottingham Co-op Astronaut hat and I still have the button badge I am wearing on my lapel. I was still in a push chair and my push chair couldn't fit on the rocket so the Co-op ladies wheeled it around to the Moon Grotto while we were "in flight" - watching a graphic representation of our trip to the moon on a circular screen.
I have no clear recollection of what I am saying but the family story is that I am asking for cufflinks for my father (he's had a pair stolen from his desk at work) and that I am asking for a bottle of gin for my mother (she didn't drink gin - obviously) primed to do this by my Dad because it would embarass her.
And this year is the first year I have not had to engage in the compulsory perpetuation of the Santa myth while I've been a parent...oh the relief...the lack of sneaking about...it's like I've been one of the elders in the M. Night Shyalmalan movie 'The Village' these last few years.
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