Hard to believe its December once again. When I was struggling through my tender years Christmases seemed further apart, less hassle and more local. No shopping online or visiting European Christmas markets for us. Months in advance the neighbourhood shops would open their Christmas club; enabling their customers to lodge a few bob every week so that when the time came they had saved enough to cover the extra cost. Our highlight of the season was a trip to the annual sale of work in the local hall, where ladies (who looked ancient to me) wearing hats, and adorned by broaches and string of pearls necklaces, sold homemade jam, sponge cakes and willow pattern delph, whilst exchanging the latest goings on in the parish. Men sometimes fresh from the pub sold bags of potatoes and operated the Wheel of Fortune.
The Christmas play and school concert brought stardom to some and a lesser role to others. Unable to see the blackboard due to need of glasses, and doing daily battle with a cocktail of neurodiversity that wasn’t recognised back then, I was considered not to be the sharpest pencil in the case, and so I was allotted the not so prestigious role of stage curtain puller. What could possibly go wrong? Surly it would be alright on the night. Well not quite; just as a man who say himself the local Pavarotti, struck the first note of his second number I accidently brought the curtain down, inadvertently turning his polished performance into a comedy act.
In the 60s a light aircraft (maybe a weather plane?) flew over Swords and the surrounding area at night. My mother informed me that the pilot was none other than the man from the north pole himself “keeping an eye out”, so I had better “behave myself”. Thankfully, the spy plane failed to spot anything untoward and I woke up on Christmas mornings to find nice presents including a tricycle, a farm set and a fire engine. The sock I hung on the end of the bed contained a bar of chocolate and an orange that somehow always tasted much nicer than ordinary oranges. But a low inevitably follows a high and on Stephens Day tradition dictated that my mother, father and I (an only child) HAD to visit our relatives. Oh, how I longed to be at home playing with my newly acquired toys, as they took turns giving a detailed description of their health issues, ranging from chronic heartburn to back pain and dry eyes. Having well and truly exhausted their medical records they moved on to their second chosen subject – end of the world predictions. Good old Spot, their playful dog who had not been infected with the malaise of his humans, just about made the day bearable. The years have flown, the relatives are long gone and this Christmas I shall be the one munching on the indigestion tablets.