Avril and Christopher Rowlands from Inkberrow raise money for charity every year with their annual Christmas lights switch-on for a fabulous fir tree in their front garden - which cost just £6 in 1978. (Credit: SWNS)
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CreativityTranscript
00:00 I'm Avril and I'm Chris
00:28 and we live in a small village, Inkbarrow, in Worcestershire and we've been here 45 years.
00:35 When we first came to the village, we, from London, we loved the fact that there were
00:39 no street lights. We came in November, the post office, and we still have a post office
00:46 fortunately, had a small Christmas tree outside with a few lights and we thought, that's a
00:51 very good idea. Our house is on a corner at the bottom of a hill and we thought it would
00:59 be nice to plant a Christmas tree and put some lights on. So we bought a little Christmas
01:05 tree from a garden centre and brought it back to Inkbarrow on the top of my mini estate
01:13 and planted it. It was never in the house and we put six lights on. 45 years later,
01:22 it's now grown to over 50 foot and we have a thousand lights on it and we make a charity
01:30 collection to different charities each year. There are so many worthwhile charities. This
01:36 year we've chosen a local one, Caring Hands in the Vale. It's an Evesham based charity
01:43 which supports homeless people. It provides a food bank, hot meals, facilities such as
01:51 as basic as even being able to charge your phone and help for those who are in any kind
01:56 of financial distress. So we felt that it was a good charity to support and we're hoping
02:03 to raise a lot of money for it.
02:05 [rain]
02:07 [rain]
02:35 People have told us that our tree has spanned the generations. People who live in the village
02:42 who are children, when we first planted it, now have grown up children and they bring
02:48 their grandchildren and that's a very nice thing as well. There's a continuity there.
02:53 There's an awful lot of support. We couldn't do it. There's a firm quarrying contractor
02:58 called S.E. Davis on the edge of Redwich and Paul Davis has come, this is the 19th year
03:03 he's done it? 18th year. He comes with a low loader and a cherry picker and does the top
03:09 two thirds of the tree and we do the bottom, which of course is quite a lot because it's
03:15 fatter at the bottom and then he comes again in January and takes them all down again.
03:19 So it's quite a big thing. If it wasn't for him we couldn't possibly afford to do it and
03:24 he says he'll carry on doing it which is a great gesture. Yeah and it's very generous.
03:28 I'm a children's author and I've written a short fairy story, the Laxford House Christmas
03:34 Tree, about our Christmas tree, just for fun. And it's gone viral in the village. It's been
03:42 very popular, which is lovely and I've been donating, I've been selling it at a reduced
03:48 price, signed copies and I've been giving a proportion of that to the charity that we're
03:56 supporting this year which is a local Evesham based charity called Caring Hands in the Vale
04:03 which has a food bank and it helps people who are homeless and has facilities for those
04:12 who are in financial distress. So we're hoping to raise a lot of money. But yes I was very
04:17 surprised about the popularity of the book and very pleased.
04:22 [Sound of traffic]