Bohemia Village Voice

Alison, bringing some early Christmas cheer to Bohemia

Cheap and Cheerful will be opening up the former bike shop premises at 75 Bohemia Road during November and December as a Christmas shop.
Alison Ansell, who opened Cheap and Cheerful a year ago, said, “We’ve got no room to squeeze all the Christmas things into our current shop, so we’re renting the former bike shop from Sellens French for the two months before Christmas. It will definitely be open by the beginning of November, maybe just before.”
Alison plans to go to town with Christmas decorations in the shop. “It looks so tatty now that it will be a lot of work. There  are bars up at the windows, so I’ll be having lots of fairy lights wrapped round them, and decorations hanging from the ceiling to cheer it up.”
Father Christmas will be paying a visit to the special grotto that Alison is going to build for him in the shop, and there will be a post box where children can post their letters to him. The shop will stock what people want for Christmas. “We’ll have biscuits, chocolates, wrapping paper, cards, lots of cheap gifts for children , lots of toiletry gift packs that people traditionally give, and lots of other things.”
Alison continued, “We’re currently running a Christmas Club. Quite a few people have joined already. They have a card and pay in a few pounds here and there. It’s put in a book and mounts up to spend at Christmas.” Cheap and Cheerful is a real family business, and Alison will be getting her twin sons, William and Daniel, aged thirteen, to help in the Christmas shop on Saturdays.