Good as we were, our
performance was trumped by 4/1 – Mister Turner’s class – whose rendition of Gloria
in Excelsis, complete with big chunks of Latin, left me in awe.
Out of school:
At Clive Ward’s invitation I went to his house on Milsted Road one evening to make
Christmas decorations. Under the supervision of his big sister Pam, we made all
kinds of things with coloured card, sticky gum and paper clips. Where his brother
Peter and the rest of the family had got to I don’t know, but for a couple of
hours and I thrived in a creative ambience and enjoyed myself so much that I
returned the following evening.
Less peaceful was
the Rainham Mark Social Club Christmas Party. As old hands of the Christmas party
circuit, my brothers and I weren’t as enchanted as we once were. A million balloons in a net spanning a
whacking great ceiling was still an enthralling sight, but between the grub and
the presents we didn’t need a lady going by the name of Auntie Somebody doing a
song and dance routine. In a top hat and a leotard, she twirled an umbrella and
warbled a tooraloora tune as she pranced across a catwalk of cleared tables, unaware
that our eyes were glued to the leotard’s struggle to contain the cheeks of her
bum. The act was hardly in keeping with the occasion but it earned her a round
of applause from a lot of bemused kids.
And the highlight
of the evening… Father Christmas! Great cheers erupted as Santa lumbered into
the hall with a huge sack on his back and ho-ho’d his way up the stage steps,
whereupon the curtain opened to reveal presents piled high across the stage.
Kids were called
one at a time to receive their presents, leaving many of us with a long wait. As
the procedure was conducted alphabetically, Audrey Belcher – another Christmas
party regular – was among the first to get a present and our resentment.
While watching
Audrey and others unwrap their presents, my brothers and I noticed a pattern
emerging. Presents for each gender and age group were limited in variation and
soon, we were correctly identifying presents by their shape, even before they
were opened. Finally, long after the give away had started, my brothers and I
were called to the stage and what a choker it was, if any of us got the shape
we knew to be the shitty present none of us wanted.
At home: The
countdown to Christmas Day was always a time of anxiety. Quizzing a flustered
Mam was no help at all. ‘You’ll just have to wait and see. It depends if you’ve
been good or not,’ was no use whatsoever to kids in need of reassurance. We
tidied up, washed up, hoovered the whole house and wiped sticky bits off doors
and woodwork with hitherto unknown relish, all in the hope that somewhere
beyond the festively adorned ceiling Father Christmas was watching and ticking
things on his list. If that still wasn’t enough, then offering to go to the
shops was surely the clincher.
Inevitably, something went wrong and a squabble with my brothers, just as Dad was due in from work, was the last thing we needed. Cold, wet and ready for his dinner, he entered to find a houseful of whining kids and a mother at the end of her tether. ‘Hither page and stand by me,’ he might have said, if it hadn’t come out as ‘Come here, you bugger.’ And lo, seasons greetings were dispensed to our lugholes, swiftly and without mercy, bringing a wretched end to hours of effort.
The following day began with an act of atonement. Cleaning out the ashes and lighting a fire was one way of getting back in good books. Satisfying too, to remove the newspaper used to draw the flames up the chimney and see the fire had taken – though not half as pleasing as seeing the original piece of newspaper get sucked up the chimney in flames, whereupon we dashed to the window to see it drifting over next door’s garden. With that task completed, I replaced the fireguard and sat back to shiver for the three hours it took for the front room to warm up. By midday the ice on the window would be gone. Another half hour and it would melt on the outside of the window as well. The rest of the day was spent idly, timing the next bout of goodwill to coincide with Dad’s homecoming.
Inevitably, something went wrong and a squabble with my brothers, just as Dad was due in from work, was the last thing we needed. Cold, wet and ready for his dinner, he entered to find a houseful of whining kids and a mother at the end of her tether. ‘Hither page and stand by me,’ he might have said, if it hadn’t come out as ‘Come here, you bugger.’ And lo, seasons greetings were dispensed to our lugholes, swiftly and without mercy, bringing a wretched end to hours of effort.
The following day began with an act of atonement. Cleaning out the ashes and lighting a fire was one way of getting back in good books. Satisfying too, to remove the newspaper used to draw the flames up the chimney and see the fire had taken – though not half as pleasing as seeing the original piece of newspaper get sucked up the chimney in flames, whereupon we dashed to the window to see it drifting over next door’s garden. With that task completed, I replaced the fireguard and sat back to shiver for the three hours it took for the front room to warm up. By midday the ice on the window would be gone. Another half hour and it would melt on the outside of the window as well. The rest of the day was spent idly, timing the next bout of goodwill to coincide with Dad’s homecoming.
‘Gaze into the coals long enough and you’ll see glowing pictures,’ Mam said. And she was right, as mothers usually are. Roasting our faces in front of the fire revealed some amazing pictures – but nothing as bad the snarling images we’d seen in the pattern of the bedroom curtains before we dropped off to sleep.
A month short of my eleventh birthday, I was used to staying up a bit longer than my brothers and Christmas Eve was no different, yet as soon as my brothers were out of the way, Mam
let me in on the big secret. Of course I’d had my suspicions but it was good to
hear the truth, and didn’t I feel big when it came to laying out everyone’s presents.
Life held no more mysteries, of that I was sure. I knew everything there was to
know about everything and anything, including girls, who were generally soppy
and not worth bothering with. But the price of such knowledge is high, I
discovered the following morning, when awoken by my joyful and triumphant
brothers.
‘Come on, get up, he’s been, he’s been!’
Happy for them, I did as a big brother should and feigned surprise once I followed them downstairs. They weren’t to know I’d
seen everything already; seen it, wrapped it and stacked it. Nor could they
know that for all the good stuff waiting for me, I was feeling the emptiness of
a magic lost forever.
New Year’s Eve: a day out, a party and an overnight stay at
Kevin’s house was an invitation that didn’t need thinking about. All I had to
do was turn up at Kev’s house in the morning with my pyjamas and toothbrush.
Preparations for this family event at the Foresters Hall, on Sturdee Avenue,
were already underway when we got there before noon. All me and Kev had to do
was keep out of the way and for the most part we did, when we weren’t blowing
balloons up and whacking them through the hall’s internal double doors, which
we used as a goal.
As soon as food appeared on the long tables Kev and I picked our
places, with my friend identifying things unknown to me. Gherkins were one such
item, though I wasn’t tempted to try them. Instead, I stuck to the usual
sandwiches and biscuits, cake, jelly and ice cream, and washed it down with
pop.
It was back to the balloons while the tables were cleared, and
then party games, when I got closer than ever to winning a game of musical
chairs. With one chair left it was between me and a little kid. Three times I
got my bum on the chair first and three times the music started up again.
Inevitably, when the little sod finally beat me, to the loudest of cheers, the
game ended. Some things are just not meant to be.
The Saints – a group featuring Kevin’s brother, Barrie, on rhythm
guitar, provided the entertainment for the evening. Kev’s mum got in on the act
too when she sang Morningtown Ride, a Seekers song, and thoroughly deserved the
round of applause it earned her.
Finally, it was Auld Lang Syne and once more I was indebted to
Kev, for coming to the rescue and showing me how to link arms, though he could
nothing for my mumbled attempt at the song. So it was Happy New Year and
Welcome 1966, and back to Kev’s house, where the two of us had no trouble
conking out, in his bed, at the end of a long but marvellous day.
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