Festive memories remain vivid
OU sont les neiges d’antan?- my French text book used to demand many decades ago. Where are the snows of yester year?
Good question. Where indeed? The climate change believers will not hesitate to give you an answer, although in recent memory, and except for one occasion when there was a light covering of white while we were eating our turkey, the traditional Christmas landscape has been no more apparent than a partridge in a pear tree no matter what Bing Crosby may have been dreaming of every 12 months.
So let us leave that debate for a less festive time. Instead let us phrase the question a little differently. Where now are all the toys that once beguiled us before video games and other electronic marvels?
Such delights were still a brainwave or two ahead when I awoke knowing exactly what I wanted to find.
And there in the pillow case at the foot of my bed was the coveted round object. I dived on it, only to create a loud bang amid my tears.
Peace was soon restored, the deflated remains of the decoy balloon where replaced by a pristine football till then never touched by an eager instep.
Confined to barracks, I was reduced to imagining the hat-tricks I would score. Had I been able then to know that I would one day meet players not then born with names such as Pele and Maradona what bliss that would have been.
But there were other consolations. For boys there were tin soldiers - actually, lead - but frustrating until you had the basis of a small army.
Instead, I became a voracious reader in a tempting market. Adventure, Hotspur and Wizard were weekly publications - comics they were known as - that were not expensive.
However, money was tight for me. My father, a former shop assistant, was setting up in business himself with a corner general store.
I supplemented my pocket money by running errands and delivering orders. At Christmas, though, each title brought out an annual - enough reading to sustain wet days.
We were not a religious family, so there was no church on the 25th. We did our worshipping for nine months at the local football ground.
The team played in the Kent League, occasionally aspiring for promotion to the Southern League, but that was never more than a mirage.
Fortunately, at Christmas we were often still hopeful. There were bumper festive gates. Cigar smoke trailed behind us. New scarves and sweaters were displayed, probably in grateful tribute to the aunts and sisters who knitted them.
I have no recollection of tasting turkey in my youth, which could have meant a chicken for lunch, but, more probably there was a large joint of beef or pork.
The Christmas pudding always contained a silver threepenny piece, cunningly manipulated to ensure it was found by one of the young.
Once the table was cleared we played cards - Chase the Ace or Newmarket for halfpenny stakes.
Then it was bedtime for me and an hour with one of my annuals before lights out.
By then the grown-ups had settled down to serious games of cribbage and calls of Fifteen-two became my Christmas lullaby.
I suppose it stands midway between Christmas at Dingley Dell and Christmas in front of the X-box or its successor.
Consigned now to the recesses of nostalgia, the memories of that more innocent era are fresh and recalled with gratitude.
We didn’t know how soon it should be engulfed and the world would change. Let me not end on too sombre a note.
It has not been a good year, but I will wish all friends of this column a peaceful break and a better 12 months ahead.