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Bright sparks!

Sophie Hazan
30/12/2003

SPARKY homeowners brightened up Macclesfield this Christmas.

All singing, all dancing outdoor decorations have been keeping the festive spirit very much alive across the borough.

Christmas characters from snowmen to reindeer are still sparkling and twinkling away in gardens, trees and on walls.

And Twiggywood, on Fence Avenue, in Hurdsfield, where a 6ft-tall singing santa takes pride position among thousands of winking bulbs, is no exception.

The jolly Father Christmas, complete with volume-control, sings ten popular carols and is the latest colourful figure to join Maurice and Patricia Twigg's exhibition. There is also an 8ft-tall snowman and a fibre-optic Christmas tree that changes colour.

It is not surprising then that the grandparents-of-five - Lauren, 11, Natalie, eight, Marcus, ten, Beth, five, and Amey-Jane, 18 - have drawn a lot of attention from passing pupils.

Maurice, 62, a caretaker at Nether Alderley primary school, said: "It took us days to get all the lights up. But I don't think about how much it is going to cost us.

"We do it for our grandchildren and the schoolchildren who pass the house. We get cars stopping outside all the time to have a look.

"There were 40 kids outside the house the other day with one of their teachers. My neighbour rang me to see if he could switch on the lights for them. And that was in the middle of the day."

Maurice's decorations - there are also lights in the conservatory and the back garden - have attracted so much comment that he is now thinking of starting a charity collection.

On the other side of town at Mayfield Avenue, Sharon and Kevin Fenton have jumped on the bandwagon and spent nearly £1,000 on decorating the outside of their house.

And their four youngest children - Kyle, 14, Boo, 13, Emily, seven, and Zac, four - are beaming with joy with their parents' growing collection of lights that include a flashing train, snowflakes, stars, snowman, penguin and Santa Claus.

Housewife Sharon, 35, said: "The kids love them. So much so that we go out on drives around the town to see other people's decorations.

"We do it for all the kids in the area really because it is so nice to see their little faces brighten up when they look at our house. I know what my children are like with things like that so I just like doing it for the others too."

The reindeer grazing in Duncan and Ingrid Rhind's front garden, on Harvest Road, in Tytherington, are not quite the arctic type but they were brought all the way from America where Duncan's sister now lives.

Christmas is an important time of the year for this couple who quite often entertain their family from all over the world back here in Macclesfield.

Engineer Duncan, 58, said: "I pick the stuff up in America for very cheap. I normally pick up another reindeer when I am there and get funny looks when I take it aboard the plane on the flight home as hand luggage.

"I get a lot of people who walk past just asking me about the reindeer. People seem fascinated with them and want to know where I get them from. Others have started to ask me when I am going to turn them on.

"I try not to switch them on too early as I think that Christmas does quite often start too early." And the Yuletide decor does not stop there. Indoors there is a nativity scene, American-style ornaments and garlands.

"They really decorate their houses more in America and it really does make you want to do the same back here."