Diary: My brother goes to a friend’s house and clarts with his homemade go-kart. I start taking all my posters down to the playroom. I cover the walls. Have hair cut and washed at 8:30am. Mum gives me £1 for decorations. (Worth about £10 in 2025). No paper chains! Buy crape paper. Glue, two garlands and bell. Decorate playroom. Lunch. Get a Christmas tree. My brother makes a mess on the drive. (with engine oil? Or the tree?) Buy plug for Christmas tree lights. Cost 68p, had been 28p two years ago. Decorate tree, but have lost baubles. Go to disco.
A Christmas tree – a real one became Grandpa’s job after Dad had left. The tree sat in the garage until required. A daily visitor, he would take seceteurs to the lower branches, and an axe to the stem. He wore a suit and tie, always polished brown brogues, and a flat cap and when working in the garage or the Garden he wore a brown odd-job man’s overcoat.
He had made a stand for the Christmas tree, a raised square frame with a hole in its centre approximately the girth of the stem of a six-foot tree with a shelving bracket screwed in place to secure the tree. This was then lifted from the garage or from outside the back door, where this work had taken place, and placed as always in the same slot behind the rocking chair bu the coffee table with, by now, the bumper two week edition of the Christmas and New Year Radio Times.
Early gifts from grandparents or cousins appeared under the tree; a dustpan and brush would be used to sweep them up the first pine needles on the carpet.
Homemade paper chains were made and strung between the room’s corners.
From somewhere a Blue Peter inspired Advent Crown would appear. We’d only ever managed the two-metal-hanger version, but got it wrapped in Tinsel, with used real candles, dangerously balanced on each corner.
Decorations of every kind were vital. Coming home after 12 or 13 weeks of boarding school. I wanted our playroom to look homely. Not like the junior common room. I preferred things out, books being read and an Airfix model under construction, the wastepaper bin bursting with rubbish. By way of keeping the place today were were told “Joan did an extra morning last week so don’t make a mess”.
There were initiations to get through, regardless of our age. In stocking feet, my brother and I, now teenagers, would launch ourselves at a sprint, down the well-polished wooden floors, skidding into the kitchen, and then, in the other direction, into the cloakroom, being careful not to knock over the hallway lamp, which had been broken on more than one occasion from us carrying on like this. It was smooth enough that we never needed to fear splinters.
I’d look into every room in the house to see if anything had changed since September – It hadn’t. It was ready to be visited by an estate agent or checked over by our father.
“What’s he coming over with presents?”
“He’s been.”
“He’s already gone to France with Brenda and your sister”.
Mum produced his gifts. We surmised, my sister and I, that Brenda had bought the gifts, not Dad. A job lot from a trip to Harrods from a trip to London, and wrapped by the shop.
Not to sound ungrateful. Each of us had a box set of paperbacks. Appropriate to our age and gender. But don’t let me spoil the surprise of Christmas Day, which is still five days away.
My younger sister and I arranged the presents under the tree once it had been decorated. There were also piles of presents for Mum,the grandparents, the pet hamster and a pet rabbit.
When the doorbell rang, we knew not to expect the queen, no matter how pristine the house looked, nor Dad, who was away. But instead, we had a visit by my godparents, close family friends of my mother’s. After a while sitting in what we called the adults’ sitting room, he joined us in the playroom to enjoy seeing my sister and I making paper chains while a 1960s Western Christmas film played on TV or an Elvis movie.
My godfather was dying from cancer. We were told he’d chain-smoked. No more. He looked like death.Not even death warmed up. More like an inmate from a concentration camp dampened the Christmas atmosphere. I had a gift from him. “How things work” in Parts 1 and 2, reference books I had with me in Oxford five years later.
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