STAFF Nurse Lorna Smith (pictured) is relying on her husband to cook the family Christmas dinner this year.

She will be working - along with thousands of others in Gwent whose job is to keep vital services running on a day when most of us are enjoying ourselves at home.

Lorna, aged 38, from Cwmbran, will start work at 7am and, hopefully, finish at 3pm at the accident and emergency department of Newport's Royal Gwent Hospital.

"I've done it before and it has been pretty busy," she said. "We deal mostly with patients who are really ill. I'm hoping it will be quiet but I'm not expecting it to be."

Husband Stephen will be seeing to the Christmas lunch for the couple's four daughters. The once-mighty Llanwern steelworks will be silent on Christmas Day this year for the first time in its 40-year history.

With steelmaking finished under the 2001 Corus cutbacks and the heavy end no more, there is no need to maintain continuous production.

There will be a skeleton staff on duty but no steel will be rolled. It will be the same at the Ebbw Vale tinplate plant, due to close next July Police, ambulancemen, firefighters and workers in service industries all do jobs where drawing up the Christmas roster is an annual event.

Scores of Gwent restaurants and hotels will be cooking Christmas lunch. Life goes on - and so does death. Funeral directors have to provide a 24-hour, 365 days-a-year service.

Lucy Davies, of the South Wales-based Funeral Standards Council, said: "There is usually an increase in the number of recorded deaths during the winter months due to the cold weather and increase in illnesses which it brings."

Also on duty will be hospice-at-home nurses from the Newport-based St David's Foundation Hospice Care. Nurses assigned to families will be sharing the day with them and there is also an on-call service (01633 852233).

Western Power Distribution looks after power lines and other electricity infrastructure across South Wales. Spokesman Paul Bishop said staff would be working on Christmas day for emergency repair work. A control room at Pontypridd would be manned all day. "We have guys on standby to do emergency repairs if there is bad weather or for any other reason," he said. "This is a 365-days-a-year operation."