Tom Wiggins, Letter Carver & Writer

It will happen like this.   Christmas will come as it does every year and it will play out exactly like or something like or nothing at all like it did the year before or the year before that.  Preparations, arrangements, lists will be made.  Who will drive who, who will go where, who will get what.  Bags and bags and bags of stuff will be bought and wrapped because we are all good consumers and if we're not then we should be thank you very much god save the queen etc.  Everyone will buy their dead turkeys in good time, big fat dead turkeys who had a good life I'm sure, look it's smiling, lovely healthy free range turkey had a good life probably did loads of cool turkey stuff gobble gobble gobble.  Friends and neighbours will be invited in, hey Mrs Jones come and have a look at my christmas turkey I've called him boris not becker but johnson ha ha isn't that funny naming the turkey after boris johnson oh god it's actually happening anyway they will bo...

The year is 1994.  I am eight years old and I watch as Dad removes a videotape from its red and white rental case.  “Right then, Sonny Jim,” he says, wagging the cassette at me for emphasis.  “The first swear word I hear and you’re up to bed."  We had rented 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' from Movie Mart, our local video shop, and I was triumphant of my place on the settee.  The film was a 15 certificate and I knew I was pushing my luck by at least seven years by being there.  As a fan of the action and war genre, Dad was surprisingly tolerant of my watching scenes of violence.  Even obscenity within these types of films was largely overlooked.  At the time, my three favourites were ‘Labyrinth’, 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' and - thanks to Dad - 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day'.  So the rules were suspended for films containing guns, explosions and cybernetic organisms, but there was something about swear...