The toys we didn’t get

NOELLE ignored the knock the first time she had heard it, believing it to be a branch from the buddleia bush, beside the door, brushing the window. It was a foul December night. The snow threatening a

MAUD had been looking forward to finally getting her decorations out again. And now with a whole afternoon at her disposal she was really going to savour the experience and make it something special.

LITTLE kids think a month is a very long time – especially when they’re waiting for something. When the something they’re waiting for happens to be Christmas, then that month feels longer than ever. T

As my daughter Emma, then two, happily played with her new doll’s house, I snapped a photo and smiled. ‘It was all worth it,’ I said to my husband Mark, then 45, as he yawned and rubbed his eyes. It w

JESSIE didn’t bother to knock before entering her parents’ house. “Hello, I come bearing gingerbread men! Call me the gingerbread woman.” The hallway was strung with fairy lights and colourful paper c

IT was about nine o’clock on a Friday night when we heard a vehicle pull up in the yard. You couldn’t miss it. I think it must have had a hole in its exhaust! Jip let the world know we had visitors. T