HAPPY holidays, winterval, thoughtful giving. Let’s call it like it is (as Noddy Holder screams in Slade’s perennial hit song ) it's Christmas.

Short days, dark nights, whose spirits are not raised by glowing strings of Christmas lights draped from every building and street lamp down our high streets ?

Well, Scrooge and humbug indeed as gift buyers use their phones to shop risking RSI of their thumbs and thus ‘bricks and mortar retail’ continues to struggle.

Many indeed are asking ,“where are our Christmas lights?”.

On its first re-ballot , Bournemouth Town Centre BID had to delay its financial contribution towards Christmas Tree Wonderland (a sum of £80,000) awaiting a positive vote.

That meant the innovative Christmas attraction brought in by a visionary council tourism director (who brought us the Air Festival – Eastbourne’s loss , Bournemouth’s gain ) would run for six years and not five and due to Covid was further extended for a sum approximating to £5m.

Wow! I hear you say , that’s a lot of money…..but the town centre would be very dark indeed without these dazzling trees. Yes, there’s fewer of them. Yes , many if not all have been seen before.

But until the electricity is turned off for good , enjoy the thrills they afford your retinas.

As president of Bournemouth Chamber and a local councillor over the years, I continually pushed for Bournemouth Council to keep one ( small ) tree from the town centre display each year and gift it to a trading suburb. I failed.

We really should have spread the largesse and our trading suburbs face even more numerous obstacles proving high street sparkle in December.

My ward of Wallisdown and Winton West saw me acquire the last string of working Christmas lights for the Wallisdown roundabout and, despite the local traders expressing how underwhelmed they were, it was the last set of working lights in the Depot at Southcote Road.

Installed and plugged in on the roundabout , they added colour indeed. Until they were stolen !

Local councillors this year have been trying to find a way to assist traders provide their own self –funded lights but with the BCP lighting dept responsible to 43,000 lit units, priorities and budgets are as tight as can be.

SSE and Volker Highways over the years have been charged with safe installation of high street Christmas lights but ‘crack testing’ being mandatory , lampposts are structurally imperilled ( decades of destructive dog urine in many cases ) and owners of high street properties often refuse the necessary permissions for steel eyes and hawser cabling.

For those who miss the cheer lights bring at this time of year, support your high street traders, sponsor if you can your Traders’ Associations representing the shops at the end of your road.

If not this year, let’s hope in the next 13 months that solutions are found across the conurbation and BCP and our precious retailers can keep the winterval lights burning bright and Slade can carry on screaming their message of Christmas joy.

Nigel Hedges

Granville Place