When I was a child during the war Christmas was a whole lot simpler. At our home in rural Lancashire we had a tiny artificial Christmas tree, about 18 inches high, that we put on a little table, and we bought those highly coloured 'link' paper chains and put them up in the sitting room. That was it as far decorations went.
I got some quite good presents before the war when I was 7, 8, 9. I remember a chocolate "smoker's set" that I thought was wonderful. It came in quite a big box and had dark chocolate cigars, and white cigarettes made with some sort of fondant paste. They had pink tips as if they were alight. There was a packet of matches made from the same confection, yellowish with pink tips. I thought it was pretty sophisticated to walk around smoking my sweet cigarettes or waving one nonchalantly in the air as I chatted to a schoolfriend. It was a good present.
I also loved a sweet shop that my parents bought me one Christmas. It had small weighing scales and a little till to take money, price labels and little bottles of coloured sugar sweets. I'd set up shop in the sitting room and play shopkeeper and customer with my friend Betty at the weekends.
One year I asked my father to buy me a Hornby train. I can't remember where I got the idea for this. Maybe I saw one in a shop in Blackpool or a schoolfriend had one. I certainly didn't see it advertised on the telly because no-one had one back then. I was thrilled when I received it on Christmas morning and it was fun to play with. But I didn't get to play with it very often because we had to move furniture to clear space for its rails. We'd lug the table and chairs out of the way and lay the tracks on the carpet but it was a bit of a palaver. For a long time I kept it, in its box in a cupboard, and I suppose eventually my parents gave it away to someone else's child. Had I kept it, it would probably be worth a fortune now. In those days of course it was just another child's toy.
One year I got a celluloid doll the size of a real baby that I thought was wonderful. It didn't open or shut its eyes - they were just painted on - but it had nice painted hair and its arms and legs were moveable. They were held together inside the doll with elastic in some way - the limbs all moved - and I remember crying when I somehow broke the elastic and all the limbs fell off. My father, being a practical man, as most men were in those days, soon fixed it and it was as good as new.
The other Christmas presents I remember were edible. Every year once the war started I had a Christmas stocking filled with an apple, an orange and a brand new penny. An apple and orange wouldn't excite a child today but in the war years fruit was scarce, so it was quite a treat. I was also given a pink sugar pig each year and I really loved them. They were quite large, solid, very heavy and had white waxed cotton tails. They were made of hard, crunchy, bright pink sugar! The taste was simply of sugar but I've never eaten anything with the same texture since. I can only describe it as frosted.
These days I spend Christmas in London with one of my daughters, my son-in-law and their three kids. In the last 4 years I see my great-grandson too sometimes. My son-in-law is a wonderful cook and always makes a great meal on Christmas Day - always turkey, but often with some contemporary twist to the recipe. We drink a lot of champagne, beer and wine too. And really enjoy ourselves.
It's strange to think just how much has changed in 70 years in England. At Christmas, for example, I (almost) take for granted now things that I never had as a child. My daughter's lovely warm house. A huge Christmas tree with dozens of nicely wrapped and labelled presents underneath it. A fridge and freezer packed with all kinds of food, often from other countries and continents as is the way these days. Champagne and wine from France. Beer from Belgium and Thailand. Plenty of running hot water whenever you want it. Huge high-definition televisions (whatever that means.) Cars sitting outside if we need them. Digital cameras and digital photographs. Gadgets to put them on the computer.
Back in the war, and before and after, Christmas was a whole lot simpler. Usually dad would kill one of the chickens we kept for their eggs. We'd have a few vegetables with it and my mother would always make a Christmas cake. We didn't have Christmas pudding and there certainly wasn't any wine or champagne!
One Christmas during the war years I remember spending the day at my grandfather's place. I would have been 10 or 11. He lived in a cold old farmhouse with my uncle Jack, aunt Alice, spinster aunt Lizzie, and uncle Tom who lived there till he married a rather fierce local woman who kept the local sweetshop. My mother and father and I walked 5 miles to grandad's house - stopping on the way to go to the catholic Christmas mass.
There were no presents because no-one could afford to give anything, except to their children. We had sausages and a chicken in the farmhouse kitchen and I remember it was cold, with great flagstone floors. In the late afternoon uncle Jack went round and lit the oil lamps and the grown-ups had a glass of sherry. There was a small bottle of port too and that was it. We walked ten miles that day without giving it a thought, which you did in those days. The walk home that night was along freezing frosty country lanes under a full moon. I remember clearly walking along between my mother and father, looking up at the moon and thinking how beautiful it all was.
It was around that time that I had quite a bad accident at home. We had a cooker in the scullery but another cooker, sort of like an aga, in the sitting room. The one in the sitting room was right beside the fire and used heat from the fire. My mother used it as a way of economising on fuel. It had hot plates on the top and one wintry day I was sitting in a chair reading a book, close to the fire, when my mother put a pan of water on to boil. I managed to put my foot up and knock the boiling water all over my foot. It was very badly scalded and injured and I couldn't walk for weeks. At one point the doctor said I was developing gangrene (or was going to develop gangrene - I can't remember which) and I remember my mother being terribly distressed. (She lost her first child, my brother, when he was about a week old. He was born with spina bifida and I think the doctor prescribed some drug daily for a week which killed him.) Anyway, my treatment was changed - I can't remember if I was given medicine to drink or some ointment was applied topically but eventually my foot recovered (although it's still a bit scarred 70 years later.)
I had six weeks off school since I was quite ill and couldn't walk. I remember a teacher, Mr Fenton, turning up from my school one day to see what was the matter. In those days, in our area anyway, if a child was off school for any length of time a teacher would call round to see the parents and ask what was going on. Presumably Mr Fenton thought I was being allowed to swing the lead because when my mother explained - standing on the doorstep - that I was still ill, he demanded to see me. I still remember the look on his face when my mother brought him inside and showed him my foot. He looked quite ill and said he understood now why I was at home. Then he scuttled off back to the school.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire