Michael’s Fantastic Advent Calendar

Since the age of 11 though to goign to Uni, I had Scouts and Ventures on a Friday night. It's actually a really crap night to do it for most teenagers but it did mean that I missed the Ormskirk Christmas Lights switch on for years.

So when Ormskirk Network had it in their programme, I decided to gatecrash and pop along.

I'd set my expectations quite low - after my trip to "The Magical Kingdom of Camelot" in September I knew that childhood memories don't quite match current standards - but it was truely dire.

They had some joker trying to big up the crowd by sending a guy in a penguin costume to get mugged by the kids and having balloon competitions. All the time he was counting down the minutes to the big switch on.

And then 6pm came... and the local priests, vicars and ministers trooped onto the stage to do a 20 minute carol concert complete with baffling sermons.

The kids were getting restless. The parents were getting pissed off. Costa Coffee were doing good trade!

And this brings me on to the competition winner. Take a look at the photo and see if you can guess the problem. She was probably only 4 or 5 years old and won the fancy dress competition.  It was a girl in a box wearing a dustbin lid.

She was very patiently standing on the stage for the full service.Her prize was to switch on the christmas lights and so she was lifted onto a little podium and the crowd began to count down from 10.

Was it just us that could see the problem coming? Little girl in a box with the switch on a big stand. Arms sticking out sideways, she had to be lifted and rotated to reach the switch.

So that was the highlight of my trip to the Ormskirk Lights switch on.  They are to be commended for reducing energy usage by 92%, but they're still pretty crap!