Continued from yesterday
When I was a child Christmases were spent at my grandparents‛ home in a small Suffolk village. There were stables outside and we all loved playing on the carts, pretending to drive the horses. On Christmas morning there was a choice for breakfast: rabbit pie or pigs‛ trotters.
The ovens in the village bakery were busy on Christmas morning because all the villagers brought meat to be slow-roasted; just for our family there were several chickens and a whole lamb. The women and children would eat first and then the tables would be laid for the men who had spent the morning in the pub.
When the Christmas pudding was served the hunt for the silver thrupenny bit was on. Only children found them so I soon realised they were added after the blazing pudding was cut.
Laughter was a great part of my childhood Christmases: we would play games in the afternoons and in the evenings the gramophone would be wound up, records would be played and we would sing along and dance.
Money for presents was in short supply but I always got a Boys‛ Annual, a piece of track or a wagon for my clockwork train set and a filled stocking. My aunt, who never married after her fiancé was killed in the Great War, usually knitted me something, a jumper, hat or scarf. But it wasn‛t about presents, it was about being together – which is the same as today.