Looking Back: The ghost of Christmases past

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With the party season under way and christmas almost upon us, Dan Hodges takes a look back through the archives at snapshots of past festivities in west london.
FOR those yet to write out cards or send gifts to faraway friends and relatives, the decision by postal workers not to continue striking over Christmas is a huge relief.
Now, as ever, the country is dependent on its postmen and women to help ensure a happy holiday for all - although their numbers are decreasing with every passing year as the volume of mail falls and technology advances.
Our archive photograph from December 1953 reveals the manpower needed to cope with Christmas deliveries back then was certainly much higher, as workers are crammed closely together in an unnamed west London sorting office.
Expensive and delicate electrical items were hardly likely to be sent through the post in those days - which may help explain the abandon with which the workers are throwing the parcels into the baskets, each labelled with a different destination tag such as 'Surrey' or 'Scotch'.
A large cardboard box which used to hold Persil washing powder has been thriftily re-used by one sender.
Our second photograph is another unnamed west London location - this time a hospital in December 1954, where young boy John Masterson is concentrating hard on extracting one of the presents
from the tree. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he is making a bee-line for the cowboy-style toy revolver and completely ignoring the dangling mirrors, toy car, French knitting outfit and Rainbow wool knitting set.
Higher up the tree is a book entitled More about Muffin, by Annette Mills.
Mills later became a household name in the 1940s through the TV show Muffin the Mule, in which she wrote all the songs and music and played the piano while the puppet animal clip-clopped around on top.
Our last photograph, from December 1969, shows 100-year-old George Smith dressed as Santa and having the
time of his life surrounded by four glamorous shop assistants from Go Gay dry cleaners in Fulham Road, Fulham.
The mini-skirted women in the photo - Marian Clifford, Mary Smith, June Phillips and Mary Quinn - are clearly amused as George acts for the camera.
The Go Gay shop is still enjoying a lively trade today, in the same location and under the same exuberant name, with another branch operating nearby in Wandsworth Bridge Road. **Do you recognise the sorting office or the hospital in the picture?