Christmas in Cambridge

For years my wife has ordered the majority of her Christmas shopping, presents included, online.

I’ve generally rejected this approach, preferring the traditional dash round the shops in the final days before Christmas.

One reason is that smaller items, if pushed through our letter box by the postman or delivery driver, are vulnerable to attack by the dog who reacts as if the house has been invaded by enemy aliens.

(If we are invaded by aliens, or burglars, this might be useful, but at the moment it’s just annoying.)

I also like the instant gratification of buying stuff and taking it home with me rather than waiting several days for it to be delivered, although Amazon Prime’s next day delivery service is the next best thing and a lot less time-consuming.

It's true too that there's often more choice online. My other excuse however is that I quite enjoy pottering around town and city centres in the days before Christmas.

Not the shops, obviously, which are hellishly busy unless you get in very early, but the streets and markets.

If it’s not raining I enjoy the atmosphere - the lights and decorations - and what I usually do, after a short walk, is find a nice coffee shop where I can read the paper or watch the world go by for an hour or two.

Cambridge, where Forest is still based (we moved here in 2005 after our London office became ridiculously expensive), is one of England’s more attractive towns (in the centre at least) but even Peterborough, which is equidistant from where I live, has some appeal at Christmas.

It doesn’t have a great reputation but people forget that before the Sixties, when it started to expand, Peterborough was a relatively small town dominated by an historic cathedral off the main square.

Unfortunately its 20th century equivalent - the large John Lewis store in the main shopping centre - has now closed, so that’s a major disincentive to go there to shop, especially when the Cambridge store is still open.

Anyway, I’ve finally come round to my wife’s way of thinking and this year I’ve ordered almost everything - bar the turkey, which we get from a local butcher - online.

Most if not all items have been delivered within two or three days and, I have to say, I’m feeling far less stressed than usual.

The dog almost got his teeth into one package that was pushed through the letterbox despite his very obvious barking on the other side, but I managed to wrestle it off him before any serious damage was done.

Thankfully most items are too big to go through the letterbox but it does mean regular trips to the front door when delivery men come a-knocking, which can be awkward if you’re in the middle of a Zoom or Teams meeting.

What I am missing, though, is the sound of a live Christmas choir or even Roy Wood belting out ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ over an in-store audio system.

I also miss the Christmas lights so tomorrow I intend to spend the morning in Cambridge getting into the festive spirit.

I’ll begin with coffee and a bun in Fitzbillies. After that I’ll take a stroll round the open air market (above).

Weather permitting, I shall then wander around some of the college grounds, if they're open to visitors. (Days and times vary.)

Thereafter, I may pop in to Fopp, the small independent record store I wrote about in 2007 when it was one of a handful of Fopp shops that survived a major cull.

If I have time, I may also visit the cigar shop where, a few years ago, I was invited by the Cambridge University Conservative Association to give a short talk.

Finally, I'll visit one of the small independent bookshops where I intend to buy something for myself.

Cambridge - Town & Gown is a remarkable collection of photographs that were originally posted on a website called A Cambridge Diary.

It featured a new portrait taken every day for 13 years, but I only stumbled upon it quite recently.

Needless to say, photographer Martin Bond ended his daily challenge almost as soon as I started following him, but he's created an archive of over 5,000 pictures, which is hugely impressive.

Funnily enough, we’ve lived near Cambridge for 24 years but we’ve never attended the famous Christmas carol service at King's College Chapel, although my wife listens to it religiously (no pun intended) on the BBC every year.

As it happens, there are two services. The first, broadcast by BBC2 on Christmas Eve, is recorded in the middle of December and is restricted to members of the college.

The second, on Christmas Eve but broadcast on Radio 4 on Christmas Day, is free and open to members of the public if you're willing to queue for hours, which I'm not.

Instead, when the children were younger, we would take them to the carol concert at Ely Cathedral, 17 miles north of Cambridge. It's a wonderful building but impossible to heat and therefore very cold at this time of year.

Thank goodness, then, for Pizza Express and mulled wine.