Sophia Moseley, manager of The Gateway in Seaton, continues her exclusive monthly column for Seaton Nub News

Off having a jolly old time miles away from the disaster that was ruining the lives of those he ruled over and then building his palace where humble homes once stood.

Surprising number of similarities between the imbecile we have ruling over us now and Emperor Nero who fiddled whilst Rome burned in AD59.

We have all been playing out a tragedy of such epic proportions, I think even Stephen King would be hard pushed to create a horror story to match.

That's why we've been pulling out all the stops to be the perfect remedy for all that ails you and as 2021 thankfully draws to a close; we cranked it up to make sure there was something for everyone, with music, film and dance and apparently, I need to wear a skirt a bit more often.

We've had a lot of workmen through the doors including the vent man, the boiler man and the sliding doors man. No, not the film, our main doors have been on the go-slow with occasional juddering that a squirt of WD40 couldn't fix.

Then there was the clock tower man who was also the third man, (no, not the 1949 film) to look at this Victorian treasure, but like his two workmates, he also was unable to sort it out. Maybe a lightning strike, flux capacitor and Michael J Fox would be able to fix it.

I got to go up into the roof space again so I could photograph the charred beams for my Devon Life article along with interviewing Alan Nicholas and chatting to Ted Gosling, what a mine of information those two are!

Anyway, after we'd been checked out and serviced (that's the theatre, not Alan, Ted and me), the man from Thirsty Work kindly dropped by to move our water filter machine from the kitchen to the bar so we can up our green credentials by stopping selling single use plastic bottles of water.

Combined with our weekly trip to The Vending Shed to refill our glass bottle of milk, we are getting greener by the day.

Do you like dressing up? I think it's fair to say Ali, the theatre programmer, does, and she has more than most including a very fetching sailor hat she wore for the screening of Anything Goes.

We were all disappointed not to see her in her elf costume for the Frozen sing-along. I was going to don the Father Christmas outfit for the occasion, but it smelt a tad fusty and given it was several sizes too big for me, I was a bit worried that not being able to see me amongst the swathes of red, that the children might think there was a withering FC corpse hidden in the red folds. But I found a very natty little red trimmed jacket with a hood that sufficed.

Our very glamorous volunteer Amanda knows how to dress up, she blew everyone away when she turned up in her sky-blue ball gown for the André Rieu concert.

With Spielberg's West Side Story coming to the Gateway screen shortly, and given I've been told I should wear something other than jeans, maybe I'll raid the theatre wardrobe in search of something suitable.

OK, it may smell like it's been at the back of my great aunt Mildred's wardrobe, but at least it will satisfy my critics. And you can leave the stilettos to me, that's one of the few things I do have a few pairs of in my dressing-up box.

A very Merry Christmas to you all!