We couldn't afford turkey, Bert so gave the budgie chest expanders
LES DAWSON modelled Cissie Braithwaite (played by Roy Barraclough) and Ada Shufflebotham (Les Dawson) on the factory women he remembered from his childhood in Manchester. They worked in machine rooms so deafening that the only way to share gossip was to mouth the words and lip-read — a trait Les used to get away with swear-words on the BBC in the Seventies. Ada’s tales of hardship during the Depression must seem unimaginable to children in the 21st century, but many in Les’s Saturday night audience would have vividly remembered those days of ‘no food, no carpets, no furniture’. ciSSie skips down the stairs to answer the door. She’s singing Jingle Bells to herself.
CISSIE: Dashing through the snow, in a one-horse open sleigh. Oh, Merry Christmas, Ada, chuck. Come in, come in. Come in and have a schooner of Algerian sherry and a gypsy cream.
ADA: I just had to bring this bottle of wine over. Our Miriam won it at the bingo.
CISSIE: That is nice. Oh it’s Piesporter.
ADA: Well it tasted all right to me.
CISSIE: Ada, love, I was referring to the brand not the quality. Actually, my Leonard will enjoy this. He appreciates a
really good vintage. He’s almost a disciple of Bacchus.
ADA: Ooh! I thought he watched Fulham?
Cissie rolls her eyes and looks away.
ADA: I’ll tell you one thing though. Isn’t Christmas lovely for the children?
CISSIE: Oh yes it is.
ADA: Not like our day in the Thirties. Oh do y’know I can never forget those days. Bert and I, well it was awful. We had nothing you know, those days in the Thirties. No food, no carpets, no furniture . . . And then came the Depression. Bert was on the dole for years.
CISSIE: Oh I know all about that. Tell me, Ada chuck, all those years he was on the labour exchange, did they ever offer him a job?
ADA: Only once. He said apart from that they showed him nothing but kindness.
CISSIE: You know you were a fool to marry him. You broke your mother’s heart. You know that, don’t you?
ADA: I know I did.
CISSIE: The morning you were married she broke out in shingles.
ADA: I know, she had hives in Torbay.
CISSIE: Do y’know, I can remember your wedding day as clear as if it was yesterday. I can see you now standing there. It was really poignant.
ADA: I was five months. In fact the vicar was a bridesmaid. When I think of that first Christmas when we were married, we had nothing. Nothing at all. We couldn’t afford a turkey at Christmas — Bert used to give the budgie chest expanders. And then, so help me God, the following year things got better. He had casual work with the council — on the Moors on the by-roads with a bucket. And we had a Peruvian woodcock for dinner.
CISSIE: Oh, what’s that?
ADA: Black pudding with a feather stuck in it. I hated Christmases in those days, Cissie. I hated them. Bert’s feet were so dirty when he hung his stocking up, the tree died.
CISSIE: Look why don’t you go home. Go and fetch Bert, bring him back here — we’ll roll the carpet back and have a knees up.
ADA: Why, duck. Why go to all that trouble? Come to our house. You’ll have none of that trouble rolling the carpets up.
CISSIE: Why, love?
ADA: We haven’t got any!