Christmas Is Coming - and Good Wishes to everyone from a younger me.
....... It will all be fun. The postman will call on Christmas morning and Dad will insist he comes in for a glass of something and then we shall see him lurch off down the road to his next customer. Mum will say he's tiddly. Bob will join us. He'll have to walk all the way from Pheasey. We are having a cockerel. That's super. A chicken is a real treat. We only have one on very special occasions. Then we'll listen to the King on the wireless. Mum gets nervous because she is a kind person and knows that he doesn't find it easy, talking like that. Then at the end she'll look at Dad and will say "I thought he did ever so well, don't you, dearest?" And Dad will nod. And then later we'll be in the lounge which we don't often use and so that makes the day really special. The Christmas tree which I helped my sister to decorate with all its pretty pre-war things is standing in the front window. And the paper chains we made together - they go around the walls and join up at the light in the middle of the ceiling where the mistletoe is. The fire will burn brightly in the grate and we shall invite our neighbour around. Her husband has been stuck in Malta for years and so she's probably lonely. And we'll talk and play games and listen to the wireless and I'll read my new books. We will be warm and cosy and happy and we'll forget all about the world outside.
Except that we shall think of my brother, somewhere in the Italian mountains, in rain and snow, and wonder how he will be spending his Christmas Day and what sort of Christmas dinner he'll have had. And perhaps Bob will be thinking of a little town in America where another Mum and Dad will be looking at an empty place at their own table and hoping and praying that he will one day return safely to them.
From here in our house on the Chester Road in Streetly, I wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for 1945 - when perhaps peace will come, but who knows?
Chris
have a lovely time and once again i am posting my favourite video that takes me back to my childhood christmasses..
cool dudes
