Advent Calendar day 6 - Cardboard City

There is a lot of harrumphing going on about the BBC's Nativity play involving "a glamour model in a silver catsuit, a bus shelter , a pregnant teenager"  etc  but this blog wishes you to know that at the crib exhibition ( Newcastle from 18th)  will be a 20-year-old precursor of all this.  The Cardboard City Crib represents a railway arch with a teenage Mary and Rasta Joseph in among the homeless and the urban characters - one new character was added each year while Sue Dammann was still making them, so you will even find Denis and Margaret Thatcher among them...
     The box they are displayed in is collapsing, but the vow is that it will not be replaced until there are no rough sleepers on the city streets for want of hostel beds...