‘Dark streets touched by festive sparkle - a reminder there are good things happening in the world’
Pictures by Back to Ours / Jason Shipley
This Place, a column by Vicky Foster
Riding a land train through Greatfield in the Back to Ours Community Christmas Card Parade
At just after 6pm on a freezing Tuesday in early December, I pick my way through the dark and rainy streets of Bilton Grange, heading to the Waudby Centre. When I find it I park up, push through the glass entrance doors, and emerge into a bright, warm, crowded space.
I’m directed down a packed corridor where people are milling about; painted rosy cheeks, long velvet capes, top hats and bonnets. There’s a man in a bright yellow polka-dotted clown suit. People in butchers’ aprons adorned with fairy lights, strings of fake sausages hung around their necks. The scent of warm soup wafts on the air, coming from huge urns set out on a table next to tea and coffee, bottles of water, breadcakes, butter.
The people in costume help themselves as they chat excitedly, finishing off each other’s make-up, straightening hats, checking all their light-up components are working. I tuck myself into a crowd of kids and adults, nestling next to a teddy in a bright green coat. I’m here to take part in the Back to Ours Community Christmas Card Parade. This will be their second night; last night they were in Southcoates, in the east of Hull, tonight we’ll be parading through Greatfield, and later in the week they’ll visit Orchard Park, North Hull and Derringham.
Before the night’s up, I’ll find out that a lot of these people are volunteers from local community groups and arts organisations – St. Michael’s Youth Project, Ainthorpe Youth Centre, State of the Arts Academy, Greatfield Community Choir, Generation Hull and Garrowby Orchard – as well as Back To Ours’ own volunteers and community cast.
They welcome me with smiles, and I chat to people I’ve met at other events, and people I’ve never met before, while I wait for someone to bring me my costume. It’s all packed up neatly in a brown bag with my name on it – just one of the small organisational details that I’ll be admiring as the night goes on. I’m going to be riding on the land train, and it’s got a wintery Victorian theme going on, so my costume turns out to be one of the velvet capes I’ve been admiring on some of the others, along with a velvet muff and a fancy black fascinator.
As 6.30pm approaches, people begin to congregate around the exit doors, and the air of anticipation intensifies. Someone with a clipboard steps inside and calls out the name of one of the groups, who round each other up and head into the dark and cold. Someone tells me they’ve gone to get the shuttle bus which will transport us all to the start of the route. A few trips in, my turn comes, and I climb on.
Spirits are high. People pose for photos with their light-up rolling pins, flat caps, fairy wings. After a few minutes, our destination becomes visible – filling one side of a dual carriageway is a convoy with two open-top buses, horse and cart, land train, rickshaw, a vintage car, a flock of fairy-lit bikes. The whole thing glows in the gloom. Music and stories boom out of speakers mounted on the vehicles. We climb off our bus and are greeted by more organisers with clipboards, who direct us to where we need to be. We get comfy, settling into the bench seats of the train, dancing along to the music. Cars honk as they pass us, and when we start to move there are cheers, a round of applause. The eyes of the little boy sitting next to me light up. I’ve been told the order of the day is waving and shouting ‘Merry Christmas’, so that’s what everyone starts to do.
People line the route – in pyjamas, prams, wheelchairs, winter coats. We clunk around corners, squeeze between the parked cars, weaving our way between the red brick houses. Teenagers keep pace beside us on pushbikes. Dressing-gowned toddlers wave from doorsteps. Cars queue at junctions, letting us pass, baseball-capped men waving out. A mobility scooter pauses, the woman riding it waving frantically.
The bus behind us carries human-sized toys – a soldier, a doll, sparkling gold fairies – all lit up in primary-coloured outlines, come to life and dancing. Somewhere among us there’s a four-piece band in long white fur coats; the toots and peals of their trumpets reach us on the wind whenever we stop a while. The residents of a care home cluster at the metal gate to their car park. We pass a Snow Queen in an illuminated globe, who sits among sparkling, falling, silver snowflakes, and leans in to talk to the children who crowd around her.
People peep out from front doors and bedroom windows. Every now and then someone on the land train shouts out the name of someone on the pavement and the waves get more frantic as their eyes meet. A man holds the collars of a pair of bulldogs who peer at us as we pass. Checking us out. Weighing us up.
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Sometimes the pavements are packed, and sometimes we only know there’s someone watching by the twitch of a curtain at a dark window. At these times, we all seem to wave a bit harder – a collective instinct. We see you, we seem to be saying. We see you, maybe most of all. It’s only at these moments that I remember we’re in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, in the middle of a council estate among the 20 per cent most-deprived districts in England. Are these windows dark because they choose to be, or are they dark because they’ve got no choice? I feel emotion well up in my throat, wave even harder, shout ‘Merry Christmas’ again, before we move along.
A terrified cat takes cover under a car. A taxi driver pulls over, holding his phone up to film us. More crowds, more people. Every face I see is smiling, and by the time I’m on the shuttle bus again, making my way back to where we started, festive spirit has overtaken me. Back at the Waudby Centre, people wipe make-up off their cold faces, peel off the velvet and lights, everything is being packed away, everyone chipping in, hands clutching paper cups of warm soup or coffee.
When I drive away, it’s through the same streets where the parade just passed, dark and empty again now. But I know they’ve just been touched by a bit of festive sparkle. A bit of Christmas magic. I hope everyone’s tucked up safe and warm now, but I know the truth is not all of them will be. My mind flashes back to my most difficult Christmas, twenty-odd years ago, when my kids were small, when things felt bleak. I remember the sight of the Dove House Santa in his lighted sleigh outside my house that year, and the warm feeling I carried back inside with me afterwards; the feeling of being connected to people again, of remembering the good, of remembering there are good, bright things happening in the world.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Back to Ours since last Tuesday, who have been working with and in Hull’s communities for five years now. I could go on about them for a long time, but for now, in the words of the man they say invented Christmas, I’ll just say this: God bless them, every one.