December is a month of mixed emotions
for me. I love Christmas with a passion that comes from my early childhood when
the family lived together in an old miner’s cottage overlooking the River Tyne
in the north-east of England. There was my grandfather, John Peel Richardson,
my grandmother, Polly, my aunt Ruby [and sometimes her wandering husband,
Fred], my mother, Edith, and me. My parents split up when I was only ten months
old after a short and disastrous marriage.
With Christmas approaching, my aunt and I used to get busy making crepe
paper ceiling decorations and strings of coloured metallic sweet-paper beads to
drape around the Christmas tree. A real tree in those days, so big it reached
the ceiling and filled our tiny house with the smell of fresh pine.
Christmas Day was the most exciting day
of my young life with the old dining table groaning under the weight of the
presents – most of them for me. And yet, every Christmas there was one big disappointment.
Apart from the books that I adored, and the festive food we devoured, I would
have given up everything else for a bed of my own instead of the small double
bed I had to share with my mother and my grandmother where I had to perch on
the hump in the middle and suffered from my grandmother’s bony knees and elbows
and her sharp demands that I should “keep still”. On the other side of me was my mother’s broad
rump sticking out at such an angle that being in bed was not the happiest of
places for me.
The things I really looked forward to on
Christmas morning - the smell of my grandmother’s cooking, the turkey in the
oven, the vegetables on the hob and a great pan of hot ginger wine and sausage
rolls prepared specially for the band of the Salvation Army playing Christmas
Carols in the snowy street outside. The band, many of whom were close relatives
of ours, would come inside and warm themselves; so many laughing, happy people
crammed into our living room, shaking off snow from their boots and warming
themselves in front of the open coal fire. It’s no wonder I have always been
inspired to include Christmas in some of my books.
Alas, the Happy Christmas’s of my
childhood did not stretch into my adult years, but I still have the good time
memories to enjoy. Between then and now there is quite a saga to tell and I
plan to write it one day, warts and all. In the meantime, I wish you all a very
Merry Christmas and a Happy and Peaceful New Year.
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