PS:

At the time the "Festive Lights" industry was going into overdrive and every third house in town seemed to be lit up like Blackpool Illuminations (or Las Vegas).

Before moving to Lancashire we lived in the comparative wilds of The Deerness Valley in Durham where erstwhile colliery villages stripped of their raison d'être remain in bleak isolation from the amenities of the city with little by way of the bucolic picturesque to compensate, especially in the bleak midwinter. In such places "Festive Lights" take on a surreal almost menacing quality, something I tried to capture in my wee film Luminos which can be seen on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBKpUHFe1BU