ONE thing I find a little sad at this time of year is seeing children dragged around shops. Yes, it’s busy, but with a bit of forward planning can’t other arrangements be made for youngsters while the grown-ups are out shopping?

Shuffling around shopping centres destroys some of the magic of Christmas for children. They must get horribly confused seeing so many items being bought, along with wrapping paper and the rest of the paraphernalia. Their ‘Santa years’ are so brief, surely they should be cherished while they last. Yet I’ve seen parents openly discussing present-buying arrangements in front of young children, losing sight of Christmas through those young eyes.

How I pity bored-looking children wandering listlessly around shops. And, I know sometimes it can’t be avoided, but surely it’s not always necessary to plough through busy shops with pushchairs - some of them are massive - thundering through crowds like tanks, with little regard for anyone else.

Christmas should be a magical time for children. They have the rest of their lives for the mundanity of shopping and the frantic list-ticking of the festive season.

It isn’t just shops that kill the magic. I’ve been in pubs on Christmas Eve where young families have stayed well into the evening, leaving children exhausted and half-asleep. Shouldn’t they be at home on Christmas Eve, leaving out a mince pie for Santa and trying to get to sleep on the most exciting night of the year? Can’t the pub be given a miss that one night?

I feel the same about fancy trips to Lapland to see Father Christmas on his home turf. Surely every child has their own idea of this place and what it looks like. It’s called having an imagination. Does going to Lapland on a ‘plane, via the tiresome process of queuing and trundling through airports, make it any more magical? Does a selfie with Santa make him more special? I suspect it makes him disappointingly normal. It’s commercialism, dressed up as a winter wonderland, and not particularly healthy for a child’s imagination.

I didn’t go Christmas shopping as a child, we were deposited at our grandparents’ house instead. But I do remember seeing Santa in grottos, in community centres and church halls, and wondering how he had the time, when he should’ve been in the North Pole, preparing for his big night. “He’s busy so these are his helpers,” we were get told. And I had no reason to think otherwise, although I did feel a bit uneasy seeing the occasional rubbish Santa on a street corner, in trainers, smoking, flogging dodgy tat. (I once heard of a kid who unwrapped his present from a spiv Santa, to find a bottle of brown sauce...)_

I’d have had the same sense of unease in Lapland, seeing Santa in the flesh. I didn’t want to see him in the flesh. I wanted him to be magic and otherworldly.

If I’d been dragged around shopping centres, through crowds of fractious people buying stuff, including toys, I’m pretty sure some of the wonder of Christmas would have been lost. And, sadly, that sense of confusion and disappointment can stay with a child.

* FOR those who don’t watch Coronation Street, apologies for this little whinge. For those who do - why is the Street so rubbish right now? From dreary Fiz and her horrible child to Brian’s tedious Nativity woes, and the daft Battersby sisters and their limp bedroom farce, it’s painful to watch. Better storylines for 2019, please, or this lifelong fan might just step off the cobbles.

* A WORD in praise of Brussels sprouts, so cruelly sneered at and belittled at this time of year.

I love sprouts, as far as I'm concerned they're one of the best things about Christmas dinner. So I was alarmed to learn that they could disappear from the festive dinner plate by 2020. Chefs have given sprouts a makeover, serving them baked, fried with chestnuts or roasted with garlic, and one supermarket serves them with Marmite. But still people spurn them. It's time to protect the humble sprout. Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without them. Save our sprouts!

* LAST week I spent a spooky evening in Bradford's old police cells, where ghosts of prisoners past are said to roam...

Ghost tours of the Bradford Police Museum - on the site of the old police station in City Hall, operational from 1874 to 1974 - are proving so popular they're set to go monthly. It's a great insight into the history of local policing, crime and punishment in the city from the 19th century onwards.

Following the footsteps of thousands of condemned souls, we took the steps from the candlelit Victorian courtroom into the cold, dark cells where, in the 1800s, you could end up incarcerated for stealing a loaf of bread. In one cell, the walls are still covered in prisoners' graffiti. A fascinating journey into the dark past lying beneath Bradford's streets