VICKI STEPHENSON-HORNBY, 35, has been a nurse for 12 years, working across A&E and oncology. She lives in Wigan, Lancashire, with her husband Mike and two children, Josef, 8, and Emilia, who is just 20 months
December is the most hectic time of year in A&E. It’s
busy all month but there’s one day that’s the worst – we call it Mad Friday, when all the office parties start – and there’ll be an influx of injured at about 2am. I remember one particularly crazy Christmas when the whole of Wigan seemed to have had a fancy dress night, and we were full of patients all dressed as doctors and nurses! “In A&E, the one thing we want to know is if we’ll be working on Christmas Day. I usually offer to do the night shift so I can open presents with my kids. Yet I always remember that however inconvenient it might be to
work Christmas Day, for anyone who is ill, their Christmas is much worse than mine. At least I will be able to go home to my family at the end of my shift. “I used to be surprised at how busy
Christmas Day could be, but I’m used to it now. People come in due to overeating or being injured in a scuffle plus the usual accidents on new bikes, that sort of thing. “The important thing is to go on as any other day and give the best care – that’s why I went into nursing.
The Christmas tree farmer
SALLY STENTON, 34, runs Billingley Christmas Tree Farm, based near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, where she lives with her husband Andrew and their three children Abby, 9, Tilly, 7, and William, 2
farm, but after the foot-and- mouth disaster in 2001 we needed to diversify and went for Christmas trees. Now we
When people say, ‘Good, it’s
only 15 weeks until Christmas’ I think, ‘Oh no, we’re going to hit the most exhausting time of the year!’ For the past eight years we’ve been growing and selling the two most popular types of Christmas trees – the Nordman Fir and Norway Spruce – on our farm. We used to be a livestock
plant around 1,000-2,000 trees a year, and a few years ago we decided to keep reindeer for visiting children to pet or take pictures with – it makes the whole experience more magical. “It takes around eight years to
grow a Christmas tree, so it’s a year-round job managing our ‘crop’. I mainly run the business
website but we all pitch in. We get our first orders in May from magazines or retail businesses to set up their Christmas photo shoots. Decorations go up in October, but the first two weeks of December are the busiest. “Christmas Day is a haven of
quiet. We still have to feed the reindeer, but the phone stops ringing, which is bliss. And with all that rushing around before Christmas to keep me fit, I can enjoy guilt-free chocolate!