Quote: Randa france wrote in post #9

---

Same card every year Brian.

---

I don't think I've mentioned this before, Roger, but my aversion to all things Christmassy has deep psychological roots that clearly still affect me to this day.

As a child I was very disturbed by the thought of a strange, bewhiskered man in a red suit coming into the house, particularly as he would enter via the dark, sooty chimney before coming into my bedroom while I was asleep.

We lived in a small, terraced two up, two down house and as was typical in those days, my parents could only afford to heat one room.

On dark December evenings mum, dad and I would sit around the fire and every time the wind blew in the chimney and the coal suddenly flared up or smoke billowed into the room, I'd be terrified that that scary man was coming down the chimney and I'd start screaming and bawling in my panic.

In the end, I think I was about six at the time, I became so hysterical that my parents took me to see our GP who referred me to a child psychologist at a big hospital in Leeds. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to get to the bottom of the problem so she referred me to a top psychiatrist in Harley Street, fortunately on the National Health.

Getting to London from Yorkshire in the early 1950s was a major undertaking for ordinary working class folk and my mum told me years later that she and dad had had to borrow money from my uncle to be able to afford the train tickets. I can still remember how excited I was changing trains at Doncaster and travelling in style behind a streamlined A4 Pacific - 'Bittern,' if I remember correctly.

When we got to King's Cross, we took a cab (a first for any member of our family) to Harley Street where a very kindly old gentleman with an enormous mustache and a strange foreign accent asked me lots of questions and gave me a series of tests to do. I can recall that he showed me lots of ink blots and asked me to tell him what they reminded me of and then he must have hypnotized me as I distinctly remember waking up really refreshed and relaxed on a chaise longue wondering how on earth I'd got there.

After about an hour and a half in a local café we all went back and the psychiatrist gave mum and dad his diagnosis.



He said it was the worst case of santaclaustrophobia he'd ever seen.



Aaaaay thank yeeeewwwwwww!

I'll get me coat.