Frances Millar

To be frank...

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HERE is a photograph of me as a toddler with my older brother and sister visiting Santa's grotto in Wood Green Shopping Centre circa 1983.

They are grinning at the camera, filled with the kind of ecstatic joy you spend the rest of your life chasing in less wholesome ways and never coming close. I, meanwhile, am captured in a full-blown tantrum: furious tears streaming down my pink face as I bid to fling myself off Santa's lap. In the melee, his nylon beard has slipped right down revealing a Jimmy Greaves-style grey moustache. He definitely smokes at least a couple of packs of Embassy a day and I imagine, was straight down the snooker club after a particularly challenging shift.