People talk about finding themselves 'in a good place'

To this day I cannot hear the name of Bicester without a shudder. After a blissful childhood in the little Herefordshire town of Kington, the Rhodes Family moved to Bicester in the summer of 1957. I was six, my brother was eight . Neither of us understood the move.

We loved Kington, so why we were leaving our pretty little bungalow and our kindly village school to move to a market town in Oxfordshire, a new school and a company flat?

In Kington we had been part of the village. In Bicester we were outsiders. Our accents were different from those of the Bicester kids. We were Methodists but the new school was Church. We didn't know the prayers, the rituals, the hymn tunes.

Being different, we were bullied. In despair, my brother ran away from home. They found him a few miles down the London road in possession of a sheriff's silver-star badge (he said he wanted a good job when he got to America). There were many tearful days.

And then suddenly Dad took a new job and we were off again. The delivery van pulled up and our furniture was loaded. I remember thinking that wherever we were going had to be better than Bicester. I left not a single friend behind.

Our new home was in Leamington Spa., only 40-odd miles from Bicester but it could have been another planet. On that first evening, we drove into Leamington's main shopping street, the Parade and gazed in gobsmacked wonder at the brilliant lights and shop-window displays. So elegant, so inviting.

We Rhodes boys slipped effortlessly into our new school. I made friends on the first day who are still friends today. The local Methodist church, run by an assortment of jovial old blokes and pretty ladies in hats, welcomed us.

Our playground was the new housing estate where we settled. Among the foundation trenches and half-built homes our gang played Robin Hood and Cowboys.

In today's psycho-babble, people talk about being "in a good place." For us, the good place really was a place. It was was a Regency spa town in Warwickshire which became our home for decades.

For a seven-year-old, the wonder of the place began with a trip to the illuminations, the Lights of Leamington when the main park was transformed with thousands of coloured bulbs.

But the big event, the one which stays with me more than 50 years later, was the chapel's annual Christmas pantomime, Aladdin.

It was just a low-budget amateur panto staged in an unremarkable chapel hall. But we kids had seen nothing like it before. The climax was a huge Chinese dragon bursting in by the side door and weaving its way up the aisle to the stage as the floodlights flashed, the piano thundered and the chorus sang.

The next morning was Sunday school in the same hall. I was quite unable to believe that the show we had seen the night before could have happened in this sober little room. I became convinced the panto had been a sort of magic, another little miracle in a happy town which folded us into its heart and soul.

In time, I would become a reporter in Leamington and discover the town had its share of problems. But those first weeks leading up to Christmas 1958 were days of discovery, wonder, acceptance and friendship. The best of times in the best of places.

The moral? If you're not in a good place, sometimes the answer is a removal van.

Have a very Merry Christmas.