Last updated 05:17, Friday, 21 November 2008

My new friend Tigger and I are very well aware that just about anything might happen – because, up to press, just about everything has.

The lights are going on in Brampton tonight. At least that’s the plan. Together, Tigger – with whom I am yet to become closely acquainted – and I, will risk life, limb, reputation (his, not mine) and massacre by hecklers, to kick off Christmas in our old cobbled Market Place. We’ll perform the sacred ritual in time-honoured wing and prayer style.

Ambitions aren’t overly high – though I’m advised Tigger is already a bit more bouncy than usual, which could be a worry. We’re up for a decent twinkle, a cheery sparkle, an impressive light show to inspire a touch of yuletide magic – but we have to be realistic.

We know we can’t be aiming for Times Square but it would be a relief to be able to outdo Carlisle Castle which, in its lit-for-festivity garb, appears to have sunk into a brooding, glowering red shadow – more Halloween than Christmas. I’ve seen cheerier chapels of rest.

Mind you, the castle is at least fully dressed in its gloomy mourning – unlike Brampton last year which, in spite of everybody’s best efforts, remained only half lit right through the holiday and beyond. A dickie fuse box somebody said, blaming the city council – which is a popular sport in Brampton.

The hand of God, someone else suggested after one too many glasses of mulled bitter. But most of us discounted that theory on account of his obvious inebriation and the switch-on having absolutely nothing to do with football.

This year fingers are crossed for better luck but since this Christmas lighting everywhere has become such a delicately difficult issue, no mishap can be ruled in or out.

The journey to sparkling seasonal cheer has been difficult for everyone. In towns and villages across the county, what once was a simple matter of stringing up last year’s lights and switching them on again has taken on added burdens of financial crisis, bad moods, retail doldrums, withheld charity – and in Brampton’s case, county council lamp posts and the furrowed brows of health and safety monitors.

It hasn’t been at all easy for anybody concerned with the complex process of assessing whether or not a county council lamp standard could support the extra weight of a Nativity star or angel’s wings, without bringing about the collapse of the whole town’s infrastructure, sending electricity bills into the stratosphere or diverting public funds erroneously to something that a lot of people want.

The Howard Arms pub was considered particularly at risk from death by uprooted lamp post, on account of eerie groaning noises already seeming to seep from its foundations. But since there’s a plaque on its wall declaring: “Charles Dickens slept here,” even heavy breathing health and safety bods with clipboards had to agree, it was probably the disgruntled ghost of the old chronicler past, grumbling “Bah Humbug!” with loaded tones of irony, from the cellars.

Just goes to show how little a Christmas Carol changes down the years.

I guess we have to remember that even the first Christmas wasn’t without its logistical problems. Nothing in that particular event went according to plan – likely for the want of a health and safety officer on the scene to study lamp posts in Bethlehem and run risk assessments over local pubs’ outhouse mangers.

Tigger doesn’t fully understand the bureaucratic silliness, a little town’s obstacle race towards light-up deadline or the parish council chairman’s excuses for standing outside the Moot Hall at dead of night in her Swarovski crystal stilettos, baying at the moon in angry frustration. So he bounces a lot.

He also has cause for much relief.

Rumours that I’m switching on the lights again this year only because I managed just half a set last year aren’t quite true. That was the fault of the dickie fuse box – or hand of God – if you remember.

No, apparently an administrative slip-up saw my name being added to invitations and such long before I’d been approached for the switch-flicking job and – once she’d finished baying at the moon – that sent the council chairman into a bit of a tizz.

“The thing is, we’ve said you will now,” she said, voice cracking a bit under the stress of multi-agency planning processes.

“It’s been announced that you’ll be doing it and if you say you can’t, we’ll have to take drastic measures.”

“How drastic?”

“Well, Tigger will have to dress up as you – and pretend!”

No pressure there then. No wonder he’s bouncing.

If Christmas really does start here, goodness knows how we’ll get through the next four weeks without the hand of God and four pints of mulled bitter.