Happy New Year Puffs and pianos
Regular BT contributor Marion Webb recalls New Year’s Eves from the past, including a happy one despite the ghastly experience of her first cigarette, and another that turned into the most savage winter in living memory.
HELLO again, my friends. In my last article I promised to tell you all about my Christmas this year-well, since I have to send this article by December 15 for my column on December 29 it hasn’t happened yet! So instead, I will wish you a Happy New year and hope I can tell you how my Christmas went next year.
My first notable New Year was 1946. Dad had returned from army service in January of that year, got a job in St Anne’s Board Mills and settled down happily, so when it came to old-year-outnew-year-in, he was raring to go!
I was 14 so expected to “brother sit” while Mum and Dad, Gran, and my sister Joan went to the Venture Inn in Melvin Square - and that, my friends was when I had my first cigarette!
Dad had left a packet with four Woodbines on the table so after Roy had gone to bed I thought, why not?
It was horrible. After about three puffs I threw it in the fire wondering why do people smoke!
They all came back from the pub very happy, thank you, with a few extra people and the party began - me first, on the old Joanna, then someone much better than me took over.
Our Dad was in his element. He loved a sing-song and whenever I think of him, I always remember him belting out ‘You’re not playing in our back yard’ and Heart of my Heart-and, boy, did he have a good heart!
The next day when he picked up his Woodies, he looked a bit flummoxed then he just looked at me and let me know he had twigged and that was that.
Our Gran always had the Old Moore’s Almanac, which foretold the future but as she said it certainly didn’t warn us about the snow snowfall which started on January 23rd and kept the whole country frozen for about six weeks!
If you were alive then you will certainly remember it. Freezing cold, with whole swathes of the country cut off, and crops rotting in the ground.
When the snow started, Dad joked “winter drawers on”, but that wasn’t all I needed. I got beastly chilblains from huddling over the coal fire whilst the rest of me froze and I had to go to St Johns Lane Clinic to have them lanced - wearing a pair of Dad’s socks and Gran’s slippers!
No use waiting for a bus; we all had to walk, which wasn’t easy. Mum did well on the home front - toast with marge or dripping, a cup of coca and a hot water bottle.
I was lucky since my little brother had slept with me from the age of about six months, and since he went to bed long before me, he warmed the bed up lovely. Plus we had Dad’s old greatcoat on top of the eiderdown.
However the winter was followed by a beautiful summer as if nature was rewarding us for what we had suffered and suddenly the whole country rejoiced in the sunshine.
We had a family wedding; our Joan, and I was a bridesmaid, and then in November, when I was fifteen, I met my first and only boyfriend George, later to become my husband.
Many New Years followed, all very pleasant spent with our children when they were small, or with friends and then we joined the Royal British Legion in Keynsham and I can tell you our best ever New Year’s took place there.
Happy New Year, take care and stay safe. God Bless. Love, Marion.