As the flames burn higher on the Yule log...
The REV A WRIGHTWALLY REMEMBERS
When I was a lad we used to have real Christmases. I remember on Christmas morning our Dad used to get up at 4am and light a fire, then he'd come back to bed. He was an arsonist, you see. Our Mam would start cooking dinner at 8 o'clock in the morning. Then our relatives would start to arrive. There were thousands of them and as they came into the kitchen Mam would make each one a nourishing glass of water. Then we'd all gather round the tree to sing hymns and carols. But our Dad wouldn't have a tree in the house, so we'd have to go up to Grizedale Forest and find an eighty-foot Lombardy poplar. It took us kids two weeks to decorate it. We'd start in early December working a continental shift pattern like our Dads did in the shipyard. We'd go up to the forest on our pushbikes pulling little trailers behind us piled high with the decorations. And on Christmas morning there we'd all be standing round the tree, our family and all our relatives, singing our hearts out as we froze to death in the driving sleet. When we got back we could smell the dinner that our Mam had prepared wafting through the holes in the back door. We'd eat in groups of thirty, sitting at long tables on benches specially stolen for the occasion by our Dad. When we'd finished eating, the ladies would retire to the kitchen to do the washing up while the men, all 3,500 of them, would debate the issues of the day. And argue. And fight. All too soon it would be time for our relatives to go home having eaten all our food, consumed all our drink and broken all our furniture. We wouldn't see hide nor hair of them until the next Christmas. Unless someone died. Ah, happy days! Issue 038 - January 1999