Christmas is coming ...

Call me Scrooge, but I can't be doing with all the Christmas hype from the beginning of December - and much earlier still in most of the shops this year. As a child I was used to the tree and the decorations going up on Christmas Eve, a tradition I continued with my own children (despite their plaintive objections - "Everyone else has got theirs up!"). But this year my nearest radio broadcast to Christmas was on the 20th so I broke the habit of a lifetime; I played Christmas tracks and read Christmas stories and poems just those few days earlier - and the sky didn't fall in and I actually enjoyed it!

I hope my two guests enjoyed it too. Tony Lawrence and Andy Phillips joined me from Newport Writers, a very active group who meet at the Riverside on the banks of the Usk on Saturday mornings. They brought with them a couple of great stories - one about an unexpected Father Christmas proposal to a lonely woman and another about a young boy transported back to the 1914 Christmas truce on the Western Front. It was good to welcome them to the station and we hope to have more input from the group in the next few months.

For my "Book of the Week" for the programme I'd chosen "Christmas in Wales", an anthology edited by Dewi Roberts. I'd discovered it during the Christmas holiday last year - it's a lovely collection of poetry and prose from the country's leading writers, both past and present. If you're still looking for a present for someone who really enjoys a good read - especially someone who has an affection for Wales - this might be just the thing. It's published by Seren. (And make sure you have a quick look on page 79 at the excerpt from Kilvert's Diary about his Christmas Day bath in 1870 ...!)

Andy Phillips

Tony Lawrence