For his 1990 Christmas piece, David Winter has chosen to elaborate upon a small incident in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and to imagine how the premises of one Mr Fezziwig might appear.
   You may recall that when the Ghost of Christmas Past visits Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve, the old miser is whisked back through the years to his time as an apprentice to old Fezziwig, and Scrooge and the Ghost witness a jolly Christmeas eve dance in his employer's warehouse, with the young Scrooge himself in attendance.
   They eat, drink and dance to the merry tune of a fiddler. Fezziwig is a fat, jovial and benevolent fellow, and despite their mutual portliness, he and his wife excel on the dance floor, putting everyone else to shame.
   The nature of old Fezziwig's business is never specified by Dickens, but we know he had a warehouse and that the young Scrooge and his fellow apprentice, Dick Wilkins, slept in beds "which were under a counter in the back-shop."
   So David has imagined the rest. An unostentatious front-shop: an emporium, where all manner of trading might take place and where a myriad of wonderful things might be bought and sold. Mr Fezziwig's warmth of spirit glows from every window, just as it did when old Scrooge witnessed that merry Christmas Eve from his own past, and recalled how jolly he had once been...and how much the years had changed him.