Your great generosity has shown the spirit of Christmas
We’re barely into December and I can already feel the stress starting to kick-in, aside from spending time with friends and family, I’m not really a great lover of the whole Christmas circus and all that goes with it.
I’d far rather be on a warm beach, drinking cocktails with those friends and family and eating out instead, without any decorations in sight. But despite being firmly in the “bah humbug!” camp, working in a radio station does actually make me feel the spirit of Christmas, and that really is all thanks to you!
We’re into the final week of our annual Christmas Toy Appeal which will help make sure that no child in our area goes without a present this year and the back room of our office, behind our main studio, is starting to look like Santa’s grotto as we’ve started to collect some of your donations. Every year it’s an incredibly humbling experience to witness the generosity of you all and especially as there isn’t a single one of us that isn’t feeling the bite of spiralling bills due to the cost-of-living crisis this year. If you’re reading this and would like to donate a present, there’s still time - you can find a list of the donation points on our website along with the details of the campaign.
Christmas for me also brings up memories of setting up V2. Our 3rd birthday is coming up in January, but, as you can imagine - there was an incredible amount of work behind the scenes beforehand that started in December 2020. I took holiday from my day job between Christmas and New Year to build and set-up all the equipment aided by a team of people that did all the building work, carpentry, cabling and everything else that needed to be done, all whilst working under the COVID rules of the time, which added an extra layer of complication. Reflecting on those last three years, it’s things like our Toy Appeal, the Tonne of Tins appeal and doing our best for the local community is what really makes all that hard work worth it. Christmas is also the time of year where we argue in the office about which Christmas songs are the best and which we would like to launch out of our front door and into the traffic on the A259 and never hear again (in my case this is “Mistletoe and Wine” by Cliff Richard). I’m personally hoping that “Fairytale of New York” by the Kirsty Maccoll and the Pogues is the Christmas Number One this year as anyone that doesn’t think it’s the best Christmas song ever, is wrong! I hope you have a great Christmas!