TWO television magazines, three channels and plenty of options to be ringed in red as viewing possibilities.
It was the first sign that Christmas, real Christmas, was on its way. The other stuff, making decorations at school, the carol service, the visit of Santa, stirred a creeping excitement which increased in speed when there was snow and special late-night shopping trips.
This year though there was no show. This year there was no late-night shopping expedition. This year there were no television listings magazines.
I had seen the spirits of me parents crushed and realised, perhaps for the first time, that we were not immune from real poverty. My mum was working as a cleaner as well as a dinner lady at the school, my dad reduced to two days a week along with the rest of the workers at the mill.
With my father having always worked shifts, those living nearby would see nothing untoward in the curtains staying closed late into the morning, but almost every day? There must be something going on.
Dad hadn't been seen in the club as much. Mum was asking for smaller portions in the butchers, buying yesterday's bread from the baker. We weren't the only ones. The cancellations and reduced orders had hit the shops all over the village and in the nearby towns, meaning the owners too faced a bleak Christmas and the outlook for the new year wasn't looking too rosy.
How long would this go on for, I wondered? Weeks? Months? Years, even? Generally kids live for the moment, but I couldn't see a decent Christmas happening any time soon and any time soon is a long time away when you're so young.
The look on mum's face; tired, worn, disappointed, resigned but not defeated. There were little flickers of fire and she held her head high in the village which told me she still had hope. The look on my dad's face; impatient, irritable, the pride gradually draining, still stubborn but ashamed perhaps that this was the position he was in, yet accepting there wasn't much he could do about it.
The lack of money was causing strife, driving families apart, but my parents were sticking it out, though the pain was evident in their every expression, facial and verbal, their sentences short and abrupt, spiky, not yet vengeful, but edging towards anger; anger at each other, at us and at the unfair hand they had been dealt.
I knew at some point in my life everything would unravel like the wool on the sleeve of the jumper my mum had knitted me that year, exactly the same as the one she had made for my brother. So much time and effort spent, yet the finished products received with so little gratitude.
In later years my thoughts my thoughts on this would change and that jumper, that money-saving bottle green-coloured thick garment, would be symbolic of some of the fight you must sometimes undertake just to emerge on the other side of those dark, dark tunnels that steal the daylight on the bumpiest sections of the journey.
Back then though: "Surely we can afford the television magazines? Surely we can afford new jumpers? Why didn't we go late-night shopping this year?"
Worse was to come, but so was better, and this year it seems Christmas may well be remembered as the former, many struggling through with the help of faith, hope or charity.
Sometimes that's all you get for Christmas and maybe just once or twice in your life it can be enough.
Maybe... Just...