IN THE half-light of a day not yet made, the lids opened over the lovely turquoise of my wife’s eyes while her left hand slipped from the bed covers to press the button on our wireless.

And the news from the voice of the man inside hummed like the reassuring snores of a contented old Labrador. The young sun stretched behind the village church and I lay in that blissful, mossy land between sleep and wakefulness – when all the chores of the coming day, which had caused such anxiety the night before, seem somehow to fall into place.

Suddenly, a mattress spring squawked, God slammed the brakes on his spinning orb and my wife’s slender form sat bolt upright. “I must speed off and do my patriotic duty,” she said, without so much as a preliminary yawn.

“Are we at war?” I asked, jerking abruptly from the grip of my doze. “Is that the steady crunch of fascist boots marching to the gates of Birkenhead I hear beyond our window?”

“No, the need for action is more pressing than that,” she snapped. “The man on the radio says the Government wants us all to spend, spend, spend our way out of this grim national emergency. There is not a moment to lose!”

Although it was hanging seven yards away on the bedroom door, an anguished croak broke from the threadbare back pocket of my suit trousers. I leapt from the bed, noting on my descent that when bent to almost any angle, the ageing human kneecap is cunningly designed to receive pain. It was a difficult landing, but within seconds I was ready to offer protection to the distressed pocket. Alas, I was too late. Its contents were already gone.

“Are those different pyjamas you’re wearing today?” called my wife, who was in mid-hop, a pair of midnight blue tights dangling from her hands.

“Never mind the pyjamas, have you seen the fiver that was in my suit?” I replied.

“I have taken control of that,” she said. “This is a time of the greatest peril. There is no place for shirkers or conscientious objectors. We don’t want a miserable ‘conchy’ with cold feet and a long drip drooping on the end of his nose – counting pennies by night in the conservatory, as the weary flame from a candle flickers on his mean features and a distant owl hunches on a gnarled branch. We are in this together! The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that you must spend on me to save the economy!”

By then, my wife had slipped each of her shapely legs into the appropriate tight and the pale sun was climbing up the church steeple to the accompaniment of shutters stuttering open on the local shops.

“Rejoice! For this is Advent,” she added before inspecting me again. “Where did you get those pyjamas? They make you look absurd with the skimpy blue top and the baggy, Cossack-style trousers. Anyway, I am off to the shops.”

In fact, I had been given the pyjamas by a colleague, a celebrated fashion writer, who is sometimes sent samples by the clothes companies for colleagues to test. For reasons known only to her, she thought the pyjamas and me were made for each other. But as I mused on their merit, memories drifted back to those pyjamas of striped flannel, once worn by all proud Britons.

The cords were the masterstroke. They were made of flimsy cotton and if they were pulled from their tunnel at the top of the trousers, they had somehow to be re-threaded. This was a torture introduced by authorities, who had been sulking since the rack, the thumbscrew and trials by ordeal, were banned.

In the end, I discovered that, if you attached a safety-pin to the head of the cord, you could push it through – in the time it would take to read War and Peace or a train timetable.

But there we were at Advent, such an emotional period of the year, enriched by the smell of mince pies, good wine and the melodies of carols, which drop like warm stones into the soul.

As I remembered the Christmas stockings and deep-green holly of childhood, my wife returned from town, rather surprisingly carrying only one parcel. This she whisked from my sight. Is it a new pair of pyjamas – patriotic red, white and blue pyjamas?

LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk