10 years ago | Old Wives’ Lees, Kent, UK | 24th December 2013

Ten years ago, we had our first family Christmas away from home, at Helen’s sister’s in Kent – with dramatic and almost sitcom-plot-like consequences.

The week before Christmas was always a busy week for me, as it was expected to be our highest revenue-generating week of the year. We decided that Helen and Charlie would take the train down to Faversham on the Saturday and I’d follow by car a couple of days later. I dropped them off at Wigan North Western Station and then may or may not have done an hour of Christmas shopping.

A couple of days later, two days before Christmas, with high winds forecast over most of the country, I packed Helen’s car, a Volvo estate, with my suitcase and a bundle of presents and drove to work. At the end of the day, I hit the M6 and headed for Kent.

Driving to Kent in a full-on storm was an interesting experience. For once, the M25 traffic helped to mitigate the worst of the effects of the strong winds – although I think I took the M40, rather than the M1 route, to avoid the Dartford Crossing. It got a little hairy taking the road from Canterbury to Old Wives’ Lees, normally a fairly uneventful road with mostly fields on either side.

By 10pm, it had become a labyrinth of detritus. Even in a ‘safe’ Volvo, it wasn’t much fun dodging broken-off branches and wheelie-bins, as they blew across my path. The last few miles were particularly eventful, almost like a computer game, but soon enough, I arrived and we all felt like Christmas could finally begin.

A couple of hours later, just as we were settling down to bed, the lights went out. The winds had forced a power cut. No big deal, we thought. At least we were all safely together.

The next morning, Christmas Eve, I awoke to complete darkness and had to check my phone to see what time it was. We got up and put the kettle on the gas hob, slightly surprised that the power was still off and starting to entertain the possibility that it might not come back on before Christmas Day.

The morning wore on and still power remained unrestored. Various attempts to find out about the extent of storm damage via Twitter added very little insight. Increasingly, the concern grew that, while we could cook our Christmas Day vegetables, we could be left without an oven to cook our turkey.

Eventually, we felt our hand had been forced. At the bottom of the hill, along the road, where wheelie-bins had been flying the night before, was a garden centre. We decided to head out to buy ourselves a barbecue.

The drive there showed us the extent of the problem. A tree had been toppled and had brought down the nearby power lines. If that was the reason behind our power interruption, it seemed unlikely that it would be remedied in the next few hours.

We arrived at the garden centre, happily beginning its wind-down to Christmas. Unsurprisingly, no barbecues were on display, amongst the festive and winter selection. “Do you have any barbecues?”, I asked an assistant, fully prepared for a disappointing answer.

His initial hesitation was not encouraging. And then, after a raised eyebrow, a glimmer of hope: “I think we have some in the container in the back”. Mindful of participating in what could be a wild goose chase, I followed my new friend through the back of the centre, across the staff car park at the rear and towards a rather grim forty-foot metal container stationed in the corner of the site.

My friend unlocked it and proceeded to climb over the various summer-season items of merchandise, rather like the subject of a Channel 5 documentary on people who fill their house with junk. A minute or so later, his voice came from the gloom: “I’ve found one”. He then wrestled a large cardboard box back over the unseasonal stock and into the December daylight.

It was a Weber barbecue, the full-sized one. I knew it wouldn’t be cheap but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to walk away from it. I helped him carry it back into the shop. We got to the till and he was finally able to confirm the price. “It’s one hundred and fifty pounds”, he said, slightly breathlessly.

I literally thanked him and happily paid, lost in the surrealism of the moment. I had about an hour to get back and build it before the light would fade. Christmas could still be saved.

And so, in the gathering gloom of a Christmas Eve, I found myself building a barbecue in a back garden, ready to be pressed into action the next day.

Inevitably, our victory became a pyrrhic one. Within an hour or two, the power was restore and the lights came back on. Plan A was back in force and we now had a very expensive barbecue which now wouldn’t see any action for many months.

I didn’t care. Believe it or not, the present I’d bought Helen in that brisk shopping spree in Wigan wasn’t that good and I decided what she really deserved for Christmas was a top-of-the-range barbecue. We still have it – and it’ll probably out-last us both.

And so, with Christmas restored, there was almost a final sting in the tail. I’d decided to bring Helen’s Volvo estate instead of my own Discovery and only when we were loading it to come home did we realise there might not be room for a large Weber barbecue amongst all the suitcases and Christmas presents. Thankfully, we just about managed to fit it all in.

And one day, we’ll get our money’s worth and roast a turkey in it…