where art collides

Unlike the idealised Dylan Thomas childhood it never snowed at Christmas when I was a boy. I think I can only remember one white Christmas which was when I was an adult and home for the holidays. We walked up Greeba mountain behind the house that year trudging through the snow and getting our feet wet. We were unprepared for the conditions. Also it hadn’t been our intention to make it all the way to the top but we just kept on going and before we knew it we were there. It wasn’t a particularly big mountain.

The view for the short time we stayed at the summit was terrific. It was a crisp clear day and of course there was snow all around. Coming back down was not easy going but we made it back to Ballagarey Road red cheeked and frozen to dry our feet, warm up and get festively comfortable.

Christmas during childhood followed a pattern that evolved over the years. When we were small, in Dolgellau, I recall the bottle of Babycham that we were each allowed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and Dad making badges for us out of the tops of Pale Ale bottles. Not much else from those days although the piles of presents were large I seem to remember. Being the older of the three my large pile got smaller over the years far more quickly than the girls’ in line with a maturing choice.

When we lived in Cardiff I remember sitting in Ann and Sue’s Wendy House watching slides from some sort of projector. Dad, as I found out many years later, had spent half the night trying to put it up, a feature of Christmas that I have since discovered in my own house. That, I think, was the year Ann broke my new Subbuteo rails. She was trying to be helpful by snapping them off instead of pulling them apart. Ah well! Do they still do Subbuteo?

I’m not sure we often had a visitor at Christmas in those days. Nana used to go to Anti Mair’s in London but she must have come to us sometimes as well. These days with my own family we have always had one set of parents or other to stay and it seems strange this year when we have been on our own again. At least we have the children 🙂 .

I do remember the year that the Amos cousins from Carlisle came to stay when we lived in Waunfawr although my main memory of that occasion was stumbling across some Airfix modelling kits in a cupboard. There was nothing that could be hidden from us kids…

The Isle of Man is where most of my memories come from though those are somewhat clouded by the fact that that is also where I discovered the pleasures of beer. Christmas in those days always included drinks at the Crosby on Christmas Eve. The Crosby Silver Band would come in to entertain us and it was a great evening. Everyone was so friendly. The beauty of Christmas Eve at the Crosby was also that mam would come and pick me up, saving the one and a half mile walk back, the last half of which was up the back lane in pitch darkness.

There were also journeys into town for pub crawls that would end up at Simon Willoughby’s dad’s church for midnight mass, the crates of beer left in the foyer covered with coats. We rarely found a party. Doesn’t seem the thing to do on Christmas Eve but the age of built in irresponsibility the idea that people were busy preparing for the next day didn’t seem to occur to us.

There then came a time when mam and dad’s circle of friends would throw party on Christmas morning, each couple taking it in turns to hold it every year. They were great starts to the day although I remember the first one that we had Tom old enough to appreciate the joys and benefits of Christmas I woke up with a stinking hangover, did not enjoy the present opening and sat out most of the breakfast in the car. That stopped the period of overindulgence on Christmas Eve once and, hitherto, for all.

Christmas Day was spent eating, drinking and afterwards watching the obligatory Mary Poppins or James Bond movie followed by Billy Smarts Circus. For a period of time, where Dad’s social and moral consciousness drove us to the local Methodist Church for the morning service we were well and truly punished with a visit from the Rev Wilf Pierce and his family who would turn up as we were settling into post lunch beer, quality street and the movie.

Off would go the television and out would come cups of tea, Christmas cake and the presents to “proudly” show off. Everyone liked Wilf but his devotion to duty and to the welfare of his flock on the pagan holiday latterly known as Christmas Day was to most of us well beyond the call of that duty and a totally unnecessary step. My return from Bangor University and stubborn refusal to go to church sorted it out. Either we all went or none of us did so we ended up, to Dad’s disappointment I’m sure, with a longer lie in and, result, no visit from Wilf.

On Boxing Day dad and I would sometimes go and play golf. On one occasion some people came back to our house for lunch and I recall two full bottles of armagnac and cognac being presented for comparison. Four of us polished off the bottles, for me, just in time to be picked up by the lads to go into town for the evening!

Christmas rolled on in this familiar vein each year until the time came when, with a family of my own, it became too much of an expedition to travel away and we settled into the more recent routine of hosting the extended family ourselves. The change of venue brought little change to the actual routine. Different destinations though. The Cathedral Carol Service for some, the Morning Star for others and for a while, until time and corporeal degeneration got the better of the willing brain, the Boxing Day rugby match. Dad still buys the rounds when we go out but I am looking forward to the day when I take over the mantle and am buying the beers for our 4.

The piles of children’s presents seem as huge as ever and they still shrink according to age of the owner. The dissatisfaction of others with my ability to time the cooking so that it all came to the table cooked, still hot and at the same time meant that I was relegated to lighting the fire and drinking the champagne in the front room. Result.

The meal is always a huge success and my snoring grows louder every year as afterwards I hog a settee and fall asleep. I still love Christmas but it never ever snows.