A group of teenagers kick a football around the misty park. Two years ago, in Mariupol, they played in the snow with their fathers.

Getting everyone together on the 25^th is exhausting. Bless the family but secretly she misses Covid Christmas, when they all just stayed at home.  

Rishi cheers the passing of the Rwanda Bill. Meanwhile, in the Bibby Stockholm, they wonder how to trace the mother of the dead immigrant.

“You know you did these stories last year?” he says. “Everything is still bollocks, so what’s the point?”

She shrugs. “It’s all a puzzle.”

In the shadows of the candle-lit church, the soloists sings, “Once in Royal David’s City”. Beautiful but to us, no longer young, infinitely sad.

A bunch of old folk belt it out at the funeral. “Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last”.

We’ll miss Shane.

She’s looking for a book for her elderly mother, something about the countryside.  Ronald Blythe perhaps.

“But did I buy her this last year?”

Terri is doing rosary Advent.

“I will say 70 prayers for you,” she says.

It’s been a rough year. Debs, a non-believer, is touched.

He’s playing five parts in a touring pantomime. The children love it, but at the social club, old people fall asleep. An actor’s life.

(For Arthur)

When they decorate the tree, Billy, 5, drops the glass ballerina.

“It’s fine,” says Granny. It belonged to her mother, but it’s only stuff.