Sixth

Saturday December 6th - St Nicholas Day... This morning Shirley and I picked up Phoebe and took her by bus into the centre of the city. Our prime mission was to visit Sheffield Cathedral. There some forty Christmas trees have been decorated by different organisations including Shirley's Women's Institute branch. The trees are all the same size and all have identical strings of white electric lights. It is a kind of competition to raise money for nominated charities.

As Phoebe approaches her fifth birthday, it's fascinating to tune in to her inquisitiveness and her evolving skills in reading and arithmetic. Around the cathedral, she asked me several questions about the things she saw - including the stained glass windows and the fifteenth and sixteenth century tombs that are located close to the main altar. To see things through a child's eyes can be pretty instructive.

I filled in the Christmas tree voting form and Phoebe popped it in the special postbox. You might be able to guess which tree I voted for but I must admit that it had been nicely "spruced up" - what a fine pun!

We had a light lunch in the cathedral cafe. Phoebe had a gingerbread reindeer, Shirley had a toasted teacake and I had a bowl of curried vegetable soup. It's nice to eat somewhere where all profits are used to support charities and Sheffield Cathedral does excellent work with the city's homeless throughout the year.

Upon leaving the cathedral, we headed through the "TK Maxx" store to Orchard Square then out into Fargate and past the city's magnificent late Victorian Town Hall before descending into The Peace Gardens. There was a lovely pre-Christmas buzz about the streets with choirs singing, musicians playing and traders selling their wares from temporary Swiss-style wooden kiosks. And there were plenty of shoppers and visitors bustling around too - just like Saturdays used to be.

We headed down The Moor and popped into "Next" and "Primark" looking for a sparkly Christmas jumper for Phoebe but there were none to be found and time was pressing as she had been invited to yet another birthday party. We had to get her home by 1.30pm. 

At the front of the top deck of the Number 88 bus home, Phoebe was insistent that Grandma should sit next to her and not smelly old Grandpa with his bristly chin. Grandpa was rather cold-shouldered as she played "I-Spy" with her favourite grandparent but I managed to fight back the tears of rejection. Walking up Greystones Road on the way home, the little princess did allow me to hold her gloved hand.