´óÏó´«Ã½

As promised, here's a second helping of Christmas cheer, as we bring you holiday highlights from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Ouch! archives.

Childhood Christmas

Childhood Christmases tend to be memorable for all sorts of reasons and sometimes, if you're disabled, your experiences may be a little different.

• On the 2009 December Ouch! Talk Show, actresses Julie Fernandez and Kiruna Stamell joined Mat and Liz on a walk down a Christmas treelined memory lane. Julie's abiding memory is recovering from surgery, while Kiruna spent the holidays on the beach in her homeland of Australia.

• In its a disability nativity conspiracy, veteran disabled athlete, and now Baroness, Tanni Grey-Thompson, wrote about one advantage of being a disabled child at a mainstream school.

She set out to prove through her own experiences, that the disabled kid gets all the best parts in the annual Nativity. Do you agree?

• From mainstream school to special school, where blind journalist Sunil Peck spent many a December in his childhood. In his article Deck the school with boughs of holly, he remembers how the arrival of Christmas meant the relaxation of the usually rigid residential routine.

• In Liz Carr's the ghost of Christmas past, she remembers how much Christmas day changed for her after becoming disabled at the age of seven.

Classics

One of our favourite Christmas tricks, particularly in 2004 it seems, has been to give some classic Yuletide tales the disability treatment.

• Ian Cook's the 12 days of disability Christmastook us on a journey through the festive season. This rather informative piece, tells you everything you could possibly need to know about disability and midwinter celebrations.

• a Christmas tail, by Adam Hills, tells the story of Gimpy the one-horned reindeer. He had a very wonky horn as it happens and was having some difficulty coming to terms with this fact, until an incredible thing occurred.

• Moving forward now to 2010, and to last year's festive Talk Show. Liz Carr plays Tiny Tim, the main character in a sequel to the Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol. Mat Fraser plays Scrooge, Tim's self-appointed live-in carer.

The Ouch! team would like to wish all of our readers and talk show subscribers a happy and peaceful Christmas.