It is hard to feel very cheery in this run up to Christmas. As a nation, certainly during my lifetime, we have never felt so unsure and vulnerable as we do now. This is reflected in the run up to this season of cheer. Spending in the shops and online is down on previous years although, in my mind, that is not a bad thing. How often do we open our presents on Christmas day and wonder what it is really all about.

However, for my 5-year-old grandson, the magic is real. He is so excited at the prospect of Father Christmas coming down the chimney. He is thinking about it quite logically, ‘Father Christmas cannot possibly have made the toys yet, as he is not ready to judge how many of his potential customers will actually deserve their presents’. His excitement and joy really does make it all worthwhile. Christmas really is for children and it is great to put them at the centre of this season. In addition, the services at the Cathedral have been spectacular! Yes, it’s not all bad news.

Amid the interminable twists and turns of Brexit there has been one piece of real Christmas cheer. After years of stalemate and anguish in Yemen, the parties have agreed a cease fire and appear ready to enter into peace talks. The guns have fallen silent in Hodeida which will allow the aid ships to dock again and alleviate the starvation of millions of innocent Yemeni citizens. When we think we have got it bad, one only has to think of this stricken nation to realise that we have very little to complain about.

When I was a young lawyer in Toxteth, I was the go-to person in the Liverpool Yemeni community for legal work. Many Yemeni’s came over in the 70s and 80s to work in the steel industries In Sheffield. Others had worked for the British as seafarers and came over here in the late 1860s. The UK had a large presence over there, principally through our base in Arden. South Yemen was a British colony until an armed uprising threw the British out in 1967. Many Yemenis had British passports and because there was not orderly hand of power, Yemeni British citizens did not automatically gain Yemeni citizenship and there has been an open question as to whether some of them had the right to become full British citizens, having the right to remain in the UK. Some of my clients did succeed in doing so.

However, the main work I did for them was the buying and selling of corner shops. Most of the small shop owners in Liverpool were from the Yemen. They were incredibly trusting of one another and I was asked to ratify in English law what they had sorted out between themselves. I still have a number of contacts who will contact me if they want any legal advice, even now. It is terribly sad to see their homeland torn apart by war and violence.

Thank goodness that this Christmas there is hope for a better future for Yemen and that must be assuring for the Liverpool Yemenis. I will always be thankful for their adding a real life and vibrancy to different areas of the city.

So to you all, have a lovely Christmas and here’s to a New Year which gives us all real cause for cheer and lets us be thankful for the so many good things we enjoy.