Help is at hand on Christmas day

Crisis at Christmas: the dinner is cooked, your mother-in-law is merrily half-cut and the dog is resplendent in his suitably festive Rudoph the red-nosed reindeer T-shirt.

Problem is, you've forgotten your nan's sherry, and little Johnny is screaming to play with his new light saber but you forgot that batteries were not included.

What do you do? You run to the corner shop. In your slippers, of course. The ones that your dependably predictable wife has just given you for Christmas.

Open all hours, it's when Shropshire convenience stores come into their own. Through their doors on Christmas morn come the forgetful, the panic-struck, and the slightly tipsy.

All in their party hats or Christmas crowns won in a cracker, looking for a hero to save the day.

A hero, that is, in the shape of a shopkeeper who, it just so turns out, stocks your nan's favourite sherry and the right sort of long-life batteries for little Johnny's Star Wars toy, which you are now starting to regret buying in the first place.

Kuldip Johal, who runs Majestic Stores in Aqueduct, Telford, will be opening for a few hours for essential supplies that people have forgotten.

It's the same story at smaller convenience stores around the county - while supermarket giants sleep, a few of our local shops provide a vital community service.

Says Kuldip: "I did it last year because a lot of the customers asked if I was opening up. They ask for bread, booze, a bottle of wine, bottle openers and even a pack of playing cards."

We are also running round the corner shop to top up on electricity cards, and to give ourselves a timely boost with an energy drink, according to shoppers at the store in Majestic Way.

At the nearby Premier Store in Little Dawley, last year Christmas Day customers were popping in to buy potatoes, batteries for new toys and, for the well-prepared, paracetamol and hangover cures.

And Bobby Bhakar, of Four Ways convenience store in Holyhead Road, Ketley, Telford, will be opening up for three hours tomorrow between 9am and midday - a window of opportunity which, to borrow emergency services terminology, might suitably be described as 'the golden hours'.

Says Bobby: "People have been asking 'Are you open on Christmas Day?' and they are pleased when you tell them that you are because a lot of the bigger shops aren't open.

"People come in for supplies - things like batteries for kids' toys, and for beer and cider. People want alcohol because they have run out on Christmas Eve! You can't have enough alcohol in the house!"

It might be the festive spirit coursing through their veins but clearly some people are feeling that Lady Luck might be pointing her finger at them. Like, today it really could be me.

Bobby continues: "Sometimes they come in to have a go on scratch cards, that's a good one, or to top-up their mobile phones."

The latter, presumably, will be so that you can phone your auntie Phyllis who bunked off to Australia ten years ago, and to whom you will be speaking to live later as she takes a break from her barbie on the beach.

Who'd have thought there would be such a thing as a rush hour?

"Our busiest time on Christmas morning is the last hour, between 11 and 12," says Bobby, "and I think that's when they realise they have forgotten something for the Christmas dinner and we are going to shut."

It's incredible the levels of panic and pressure that a single day can heap on a human being. In the days before Christmas, supermarkets heave like rations are about to be brought in.

People stock up as though they are expecting a natural disaster to strike and that they will have to feed their families for months on all the supplies they can get into the boot of a Ford Mondeo.

Supermarket shelves are left decimated, and still we forget those little essentials - your pickled onions and uncle Bob's favourite mustard.

So all hail the saviour on Christmas Day - your local shopkeeper. For your life has been spared, and that well-deserved nap on the sofa after the Queen's speech - in your new Jedi dressing gown - can be enjoyed in the smug satisfaction that another Christmas Day has gone swimmingly to plan.