EVERYONE will soon be thinking about Christmas our shops, garden centres and advertisements in this paper will leave us no option. It must be admitted that I quite like it, so no complaints.

We moved to Gloucestershire in December 2005, coming to live in a house in the centre of Cirencester.

The Close we live in certainly deserves the title respectable.

Mrs Light was new to the ways of a Cotswold Christmas so I warned her we would be visited by various carol singers.

They would be of varying quality, but they would be many. This emotive account of carol singing in “Cider with Rosie” was required reading.

We waited, and waited, we have waited for thirteen years and not a Christmas note have we heard.

I am disappointed, but Mrs Light is scornful.

Living on the edge of Hempstead Heath she was seasonally serenaded by many tuneful young people, often with musical accompaniment.

Some knocked on the door, others such as the church choir sang from the street corner. Highlight was the Rotary Christmas float.

A benign Father Christmas was pulled up Highgate Hill and back, surrounded and supported by a band of Rotarian brothers huffing and puffing all fulfilling their Christmas duty.

They would have been sent on their way by a festive high tea (Mrs Light is good at such things). All our singing visitors and our own personal expeditions added to the Christmas spirit.

We were weary but happy. I am sure there are carol singers in Cirencester, but they have not been heard here.

Young and old, groups or individuals get practicing.

There are many Christmas traditions that need to be maintained or the season will simply wallow in commercialism.

The Subscription Rooms in Stroud and the Everyman Theatre in ~ Cheltenham host Johnny Coppin and of course the Pantomime with our hero of humour Tweedy the clown.

These are the rocks on which our Cotswold Christmas is built. Both occasions are in the true spirit of the season.

I must head for the respective box offices.