Open Writing

On Christmas eve Mum would substitute a pillowcase instead of a stocking at the end of my bed. One time I had a Noah’s Ark with beautifully carved wooden animals; another time there was a doll’s dresser with a tea set, and then there was the doll’s cot with a double jointed doll with flaxen hair, and wearing a pretty dress, sitting up in it.

At Christmas when all the cousins were small their Mums - the three sisters Flo, Kit and Alice, would get us all together. My aunt Flo and her four didn’t come until the afternoon of Christmas Day, and then after a cup of tea for the grown-ups we all played games. Later in the evening we sang songs like ‘Underneath the Spreading Chestnut Tree’ with all the actions, going on with ‘Two Little Girls in Blue’- sung for Nanna; followed with Music Hall songs like ‘Antonio and his Ice Cream Cart’.

The endless games, changing through the years as we grew older from Squeak Piggy Squeak, Musical Chairs, Blind Man’s Buff, Pinning the Tail on a Donkey, Oranges and Lemons, to ‘Simon says’ when we had to copy Simon’s actions or pay a forfeit, find farthings in a bran tub, guessing how many peas were in a jam jar, Blow Football, Pass the Parcel -(once there was an uncooked pig’s trotter in it), Postman’s Knock and the simple card game ‘Beat your Neighbours out of Doors’.

When we were a bit older there was there was ‘Land, Sea and Air’ and guessing games like the one when all the lights were turned out and an object passed round in the dark, which we had to identify. (I still remember the disgust at getting hold of a wet flannel). We also played ‘Animal, Vegetable and Mineral’, Housey-Housey, or Lotto, (now called Bingo), How many objects on a tray, how many times a candle could be lit with one match, and Nanna’s special board game of Bombardo - its spinning top knocking coloured ping-pong balls off their wire cups by means of a wooden knob on the end of a string, banging against the top and shooting outwards.

When we grew older we played Consequences, or guessing games like Adverts, or putting names of newspapers and magazines to mimes acted out by Uncle Charlie who was ribbed for years for his ‘Tit Bits’, when he rushed round before our startled eyes, hugging two of Vera’s dolls against his chest
For tea there was ham, tomatoes, cress and celery, jelly and blancmange, trifle, jam tarts, and the large iced Christmas cake. We put on paper hats from the crackers, read out the mottoes and saved the scraps for our scrap-books.

In the evening there were nuts to crack, the shells thrown on to the open fire. Dates packed in a paper-lace-edged box were handed round, and tangerines, full of pips, also figs, almonds and muscatels, boxes of pink and white Turkish delight and dishes of mixed sweets such as Bluebird toffees, Pascall’s fruit bonbons, Nuttalls mintoes, Silmos Lollies, home-made coconut ice and Rowntrees chocolate ‘throw-outs’ (misshapes), from our local sweet shop.

Nanna Harris and her sister my Great Aunt Annie would have a tawny port and lemon, the children had fizzy lemonade and the grown-ups had sherry and a milk stout for Auntie Flo.

Late at night before bed, Aunt Alice would bring in vast platefuls of bread and dripping from the leg of pork we’d had for dinner, with the little bits of brown jelly glittering, as we sprinkled salt over our slices. We never had chicken or turkey for Christmas dinner, as in those days they were too expensive. In addition there were hot sausage rolls and mince pies. Various drinks were ordered: Bovril for Nanna Harris, Bournvita for Great Aunt Annie, tea or Camp coffee for Kit, Flo and Alice and their husbands, and cocoa for the children.

Aunt Alice’s flat was two floors above a sweetshop where she helped out when the owners went on holiday. I slept in their front room with my cousin Vera in the bed against the back wall. The piano stood opposite the fireplace, and from outside the room was lit by the big glass globe of an extra-tall street-lamp on Crouch Hill, shining through the window.

Over in the corner was the now-raided Christmas tree, its tinsel glittering - the little fairy doll still on the top. It had not yet been decided who would have her. Of course when we left for home I must have had my attention deflected and I never saw it again.

One Christmas they all came to our home in Islington; also an upstairs flat. My Dad always tried to make us laugh by pretending to walk into the edge of the door, banging his foot on the bottom as he held his face and rubbed his nose.

Dad had dressed up as a white-faced clown, in a costume made by Mum on the sewing machine out of an old sheet. He had a frill round his neck, and black pom-poms down his front. I didn’t recognise him as my Dad with his big red nose and his large red lips, painted on in greasepaint. When he rolled around the floor with my cousin Stan on top, jumping all over him, I cried. It wasn’t because I was frightened that he looked strange - although it had been a shock when I first saw him - but I thought he was being hurt, as I knew he suffered rheumatism badly after his time in the trenches.

We had games like fishing for farthings in a bran tub, and musical chairs, passing an orange along underneath your chin, and once we had bobbing for apples with a bowl of water and apples floating in it. My cousin Stan would not give in until he emerged with a streaming wet face and an apple in his teeth.

That year, my aunt Alice and Uncle Charlie left to walk home to Crouch Hill. Nanna Harris went downstairs to sleep with her sister, my great aunt Annie. My two boy cousins I think went next door to sleep on Great Aunt Emma’s front room floor. Aunt Flo and Uncle Arthur slept on our front room floor and Mum and Dad squeezed into my single bed.

The four of us girls put on our nightgowns and got ready for bed in my parents bedroom. Side by side along the length of the double bed they had put tea-chests to allow room for our feet, so we four slept side by side along the width of their double bed; the nightlight in a saucer on the mantelpiece, and the enamel potty within reach under the end of the bed.

At first it was very strange and bumpy and uncomfortable but Rosie, Gracie, Vera and I were all so tired that we soon had our discomfort blotted out in the sleep of oblivion.

In the morning we took it in turns to get washed in our scullery downstairs.

That was the one and only time Kit had all the family for Christmas. It must have been just too much, as my Mum was never a natural hostess or party-giver.

But yet, as a widow in her eighties, each Christmas she was still heard to say “What are we going to play next, ‘Leen?”

She never got over the fact that, we and our sophisticated teenagers, had forsaken all the delights of the times when ‘her Eileen’ and her sisters’ children all were young.