00:00I'm Avril and my husband's Chris. We've been married 51 years now. We moved up here to
00:17Inkborough from London in 1978 and we liked the fact that there were no streetlights then
00:24in the village. And we moved in November and the post office up the road had a little outside tree
00:31with six lights on it and we thought, oh that looks really nice. As we have a corner house,
00:36we planted a Christmas tree and we bought a tree that has never been in the house,
00:42planted it in the front garden. It's a corner house so it stands out well and we put six
00:48lights on it. Now, 46 years later, it's 50 foot plus high. It has sets of lights in 25s and 50s
01:00but there are 42 of them at the moment on the tree. About a thousand lights. Yes, about three
01:07thousand watts if you're interested. Some years ago, some friends helped us dig a trench. We put
01:13a cable in a pipe to the tree. So it's quite a lot of electricity but it's worth it because it's
01:23become a village institution in a way. It's become a village institution and we know people in the
01:30village who have said to us, I used to go to sleep looking at those lights when I was a little girl
01:36and now I take my children to the switch on which is rather nice. The last 20 years we've done a
01:42charity collection. The lights are put on the top of the tree by S.E. Davies and Redditch who are a plant
01:49high contractor and they come with a low loader and a cherry picker and they've done it for nothing
01:54for 20 years. That would be an extraordinary amount of money if you had to pay for it. We couldn't afford it.
01:58And they come and take them down again afterwards. We couldn't afford it and for 20 years we've been having a
02:04switch on with a charity collection. There are so many worthwhile charities that we choose a
02:10different one each year. This year it's the Midlands Air Ambulance who only receive funding, they don't
02:17get any government funding. It's all volunteers and businesses and individuals. We normally have a
02:24fairground organ but that couldn't come this year. Paul Davies normally comes with a steam
02:28tractor engine and he can't come this year. A wonderful company called the Really Awesome Coffee
02:33Company bringing their really awesome coffee, mince pies and refreshments and then we let off
02:40fireworks in the back garden. So it should be fun. That's this Saturday at half past six, between half past six, quarter to seven.
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