White Christmas?

I no longer have any expectations..... no point; it never snows any more at Christmas; at least not in the South East. Was it ever magical? I think it was – I remember. Summers were brighter and winters were colder, all the seasons were more defined. During the winter of 63 the snowman at the end of the road by the lone Scots pine stood for weeks. Expectations, disappointment, excitement, – the stuff of childhood, that we can struggle more with as adults.

We lived in Twickenham in what we called a “dead end road”. That is a no through road – with a high brick wall at the end -over that wall was “The Orchard” a derelict Victorian walled garden – that was our secret playground along with the road itself.

We lived an outdoor life - “Can I go out to play?” And out I went at ever opportunity. We went everywhere that we weren't supposed to - through back gardens, over fences, up and down the river Crane in our Wellington boots. The water always came over the top – but the boots were more to protect our feet. Being told off by hostile adults. Street games – being U.N.C.L.E agents with our Sekiden Guns – those clay pellet repeating revolvers that wouldn't be allowed nowadays.

The road itself had only a scattering of cars. The neat terrace houses were occupied by ordinary folk: a nurse, a builder, an ice cream van man. It changed with the years – by the time I left it was chocker with cars – two car professional couples with a job each and loft extensions. The houses now worth a small fortune.

I was walking up the middle of the road one Christmas looking at the heavy leaden sky – wonderingly, expectantly. I think it was actually Christmas eve; and it started snowing, slowly at first, the flakes appearing as if by magic in the air. And it didn't stop.

By the evening everybody was out in the road, the children that is and the student doctors that had been partying at the nurses house. They dragged us at full pelt down the road on sledges and spun recklessly at the end of the run. We are out their for hours, our little hot bodies melting the snow; so I remember ending up soaked through.

It definitely snowed another Christmas. My young brother and I woke -we looked out the window – the snow lay thick and a bright full moon in a clear sky lit up the garden. We heard the milkman doing his rounds; morning! We found our plump stockings at the end of our beds. These were our father's great long air force socks – and we started delving. Our angry father opened the bedroom door. “What are you doing? It's 1.30 in the morning!“ “But the milkman's been”... we protested. "DON'T BE RIDICULOUS!"– he bellowed. We went back to sleep in the false dawn. Christmas morning our father, a fair man - apologised – he said the Milkman had been – obviously getting his round in very early.

A less happy Christmas was my thirteenth, when they put me in a glass box for two weeks over the Christmas period. I was feeling unwell while we were decorating the tree. The next morning I couldn't move So the doctor sent me to the local Isolation Hospital with suspected glandular fever. – kept in this glass box of a room. Many of the children mentioned above came and waved Merry Christmas through the window. My Mother visited twice a day. I felt very sorry for myself. I didn't even have the Christmas camaraderie of a ward. My company was a rather strange boy in his box on one side and a kind yellow Irish man -he had Jaundice- on the other.

It was strange, medical staff came and went – I was probed anally - as you are, given drugs, a man with a wheel chair arrived one day and took my out for a ride in the grounds. I was actually going for a X-ray. All this done with great seriousness and no explanation – it seemed rude to ask questions at that age.

My main concern however was that they were after my tonsils. A whole posse came in once – The Consultant, the Doctor and a few nurses – like some kind of royal procession. My mum was there and they were asking her if I had many colds etc etc. And had I had tonsillitis? You see my real fear – the lurking dread that lay behind everything was my phobia about anaesthetics that had been instilled due to the horrors of teeth extractions under gas.

It seemed that everybody at school had had their tonsils or their adenoids out – it was all the rage at the time. Have the experts decided that it no longer a good thing? Given that any operation has some risk – it seems surprising that they were whipping them out everywhere. They were after my tonsils – and that would mean an operation and the horror of facing anesthetics.

Any way to sum up. They didn't take my tonsils out (I proudly still have them). I didn't have Glandular Fever, I simply had a physical collapse caused by huge emotional stress caused by changing school at the worst possible time - but I'm nearly over that all now.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!