It was Christmas eve. In fact, the hot night had ticked along and it was probably Christmas morning by the time the events I'm remembering took place.
I was sleepily awake, sweating with heat and apprehension, wound to a pitch of excitement manifesting itself somewhere in my chest as a sort of exquisite weight that made breathing an effort. I was about seven years old but, despite my advancing years, I remained a dogged believer in Father Christmas.
This belief was maintained in the face of a cacophony of cynicism and derision from the youthful toughs among whom I grew up and despite my own unspoken perception of certain evidence that would have shaken my belief to its foundations if I'd allowed it any room to move.
Armed with this fragile faith, curled up in my bed in the darkness to which the skylight in the passage just outside the door lent a ghostly luminescence, I sensed his imminence.
Sensing Father Christmas's imminence involved an even greater willing suspension of disbelief than you might think because I shared the room with my two uncles, Jim and Alex. Jim's snores rolled gently but insistently through the darkness like the distant gunfire from which he had so recently and with great relief escaped. Alex, too, was pleased to have survived active service, but daily expressed that gratitude in spectacular binges round his St Kilda watering holes, so that his snores, when at last sleep claimed him from other kinds of oblivion, were neither distant nor gentle.
So, to imagine Father Christmas fairy-footing it across our worn bedroom lino amid what sounded like the Normandy landing was a hard ask. I managed though, and, sure enough, he arrived — a dark shape who seemed to take ages, tinkering and rustling and adjusting.
In deference to his visit, I squeezed my eyes shut and, of course, when I opened them after what seemed only a few minutes, it was morning. The snores crackled on but bright sun glowed in the skylight and silver dust motes swirled in its slanting beam. Inching across the floor like a tentative dawn it revealed a series of marvels.
A camouflaged fortress with soldiers pointing rifles through the crenellations dominated a battlefield below