Stevensons: The train to Christmas

Alex, Gabby and Nick are amazed.

Christmas is the big, annual holiday here. Unless you work in retail or for an American company you can expect a few days leave. For some of us Christmas runs into New Year, giving us about a week off.

The schools here didn't close until the 21st, which suited us fine. However, there was a lot still to do in the run-up to Christmas. Hanna had most of it in hand and we enjoyed two sedate evening visits to the boutiques of Cambridge where it was pleasant to pop in and out of the independent shops in the older streets of town. We avoided the crush of the busy malls but, like most people, we resorted to the Internet for the bulk of the shopping, despite misgivings.

For us, the Christmas season begins with a ride on the Nene Valley Railway aboard the "Santa Special". We always book for a lunchtime train, as close to Christmas as we can make it. Sometimes we get a bit of snow, which gives the ride a makeover as the "Polar Express". In other years we have had extreme frost and it has been difficult for the leaky steam engine to keep the carriages warm. Once we linked up to Thomas the Tank Engine so that he could pump extra steam through our pipes.

This year we had dark grey skies and rain, which made the arrival of the big black engine, belching smoke and steam, look even more dramatic then usual. The heavy rain had swollen the River nene out of its banks and across the whole valley so the journey was all water, steam, black willows and grey skies. The flooded fields were full of wildfowl, plovers and gulls, but we were content to sit and chat for an hour while the world slid past.

Our party consisted of ourselves (Jim, Hanna and Dan) plus Nick and Gabby and our friends the Lambtons (Margaret, Nigel, Alex and Harriet), making nine of us in all. We made a party of it by bringing snacks along to add to the mince pies and booze provided on the train. The party atmosphere was encouraged by the friendly volunteers who wear bright waistcoats for the occasion. Special guests popped by in the form of Santa and by a rather sinister looking clown.

Hanna and a creepy clown.

No trip on the Santa Special would be complete without Sir Topham Hat. He's always there, smiling blithely as though all was right with the Railway and the world. He asked us how many years we had made the trip and we thought 17, probably. He reckoned he'd done 37 years or thereabouts, yet he still seems to love the occasion every day, several times a day.

That evening we all gathered again at our house for a meal of bits-and-bobs from Marks and Spencer's, washed down with some rather good wine.

......"And so to bed", as they say.