Christmas

Our Christmas always began in the afternoon on Christmas Eve.

Mum would roll up her sleeves, clear the old ashes, re-lay and light the fire under the brick boiler in the corner of the scullery and fill it up with buckets of cold water. She would fetch out towels and clean undies and nightclothes, drape them over the fireguard in front of the range in the kitchen, and fetch in an extra bucket of coal to keep the fires stoked up.

Shortly before Dad was due home from work, the boiler would be bubbling gently and she would put the kettle and three big saucepans on the gas stove. Then, with a lot of clanging and swearing, in would come the tin bath that hung on the wall by the outside lavatory.

Laying newspapers on the floor and with cries of, ‘Keep out of me way, I don’t want you getting scalded and ending up in hospital for Christmas,’ mum would come in with a bucket of boiling hot water and tip it in the bath followed with a couple of buckets of cold and then mum would test the water with her elbow, because Elaine my little sister was the first to go in.

The bath was topped up with more hotters for me and then while we were still wrapped in towels, mum would get in and we’d help her wash her long, black hair with Eve Shampoo. During the year she used Vaseline shampoo, but the more expensive Eve had a picture of a woman with long dark hair on the front. The powder inside both brands looked and smelled the same so it was probably only our imagination or the glamour of the packaging that mum’s hair, which was also black and long had an extra sheen when she used it.

As a special treat and then only if she could afford it, every year at Christmas mum would buy a bar of scented soap with two matching bath cubes and a tin of talcum powder. White Fire, which came wrapped in red cellophane was our favourite, and as each of us got in the bath, mum would drop in half a cube.

Dad used to get in last, and used to say it was a good job he wouldn’t be leaving the house anymore for a couple of days, because he smelled like a woman of ill repute.
Rubbed down with warm towels, sprinkled lavishly with talc, and in our clean nightie or pyjamas, we couldn’t wait to put our stocking and pillowcase on the bottom of the bed, snuggle down with a hot water bottle under the clean sheets mum had put on our beds that morning, and wait for Father Christmas to come.

And although it was a very long time ago, every Christmas Eve as I stand in the shower, I slip back in time for a few moments and conjure up the combined smells of clean sheets, coal fires, airing clothes and clouds of White Fire scented steam…

Stocking Fillers.

Stocking fillers have changed a bit since my day. They used to be small and inexpensive with the bigger presents in a pillowcase if we were lucky.

Gran would give my sister and I a couple of her stockings that had been darned so many times they were lumpy and hurt her feet, and on Christmas morning along with the presents, in the toe we’d find some unshelled nuts, an orange or tangerine and a few freshly minted copper coins.

Nowadays you could go bankrupt filling the leg of a pair of tights with the sort of things teenagers go for and I can foresee the day when a computer will fit snugly into the toe of one of dad’s old socks.

I wonder how many of you remember the ready filled stockings you could buy during my childhood and through to the early seventies. Made of net, with a red or green border sewn around the edges and different contents for boys and girls, every year we’d find one on the end of our beds. They were a source of endless fascination to me and Christmas wouldn’t have been the same without one.

Produced somewhere in the Far East, the stocking for girls would contain things like a small cellulose kewpie doll, a miniature wooden bat and ball game, a small rubber ball, a wooden spinning top, a skipping rope for midgets and a couple of thin comic books featuring weird looking characters.

One year I assume the factory they were assembled in made a mistake and all the speech balloons in the comics were written in a foreign language. It kept me amused for hours trying to guess what the characters were saying.

With the advent of plastic toys from Hong Kong the contents of the stocking became a bit more adventurous, but also more flimsy. They rarely survived the hazard of disappearing under piles of wrapping paper and being trodden on as Dad went around our bedroom with a cardboard box, picking up after us and then burnt the wrapping paper, nut shells and anything else that was combustible on the fire. But not the comics! I always made sure they didn’t go up in flames before I’d read them thoroughly.

On the subject of Reading; we went there on business last week and I determined that while I was there I would look up some of the recent developments. For a start, the bus we used from the Park and Ride was running on gas; the industrial and housing development on the Basingstoke Road area left me somewhat bemused, as familiar landmarks such as they were in that part of town have almost disappeared. The news recently has been dominated by the start of the electrification of the Great Western Rail network together with the redevelopment of Reading Station. I wandered around Valpy Street (unrecognisable) and the Forbury but the station itself is amazing. One old part of the Victorian station remains but now as a pub/restaurant. The area in front of the station is now on two levels and can be approached from two directions; but it means one can no longer drive past as the concourse is blocked off to traffic. And Broad Street is pedestrianised, with all our familiar buses passing along Friar Street. There are still a few recognisable places. Heelas, for one!
It was an interesting experience!