December 1889, a week before Christmas. The village shop at Brindlecote, in Leicestershire, has a brand-new plate-glass window, and with everything in the shop crammed into it at once, it looks like a drawer turned upside down. So Lettice Rudd asks for help from Ambrose Tull, who has just retired after a lifetime as property man at the Theatre Royal in Leicester, where his job was to make sure everything on the stage could be seen from the very back row. Through the week before Christmas, with her husband Barnaby, who wants every tin on show, the window is built, looked at from across the road, taken apart and built again, until on Christmas Eve morning there is nothing left to move. You chose this story in our community poll. Thank you. Behind the story: Victorian pantomimes traditionally opened on Boxing Day, so the week before Christmas was one of the busiest of the year for a theatre's property men. That is why Ambrose had to be retired to have his evenings free. Further reading: V&A – The Story of Pantomime: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-pantomime No music, only soft ambient sound. Narrated with a calm synthetic voice. Also on Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer and iHeartRadio — links on the channel page. #ChristmasStory #VillageShop #BedtimeStory