Poor little Minge

I've just come back from taking Meg and Mary out for their last trot of the day, as I usually do at this time of night.

Nine times out of ten, I meet a man who lives somewhere around here and his wee mongrel, Jasper. The guy usually wants to chat to me at length and throw a stick for Meg and Mary.

This evening, he began to tell me how he'd started his Christmas shopping.

I know. It's June. He's started his Christmas shopping.

As incredulous as this was, and as desperate as I was to understand why anyone would start their Christmas shopping in June, all I wanted to do was get away. The man was not boring. He did not smell of fish. He didn't moon at me. No, but I was being bitten to death by bloody midges! I could feel them crawling all over my head. I could hear them buzzing in my ear. I was also aware that they were bloody well biting me!

Aaaggghhh!

Then, thank the Lord, it started to spit with rain. I made my excuses and left.

I couldn't get his Christmas shopping out of my head. La la la la la la la la.

I've not done any Christmas shopping yet, and don't plan to, until at least October. When do you start your Christian pilgrimage to the shopping centres, dear reader?

The Christmas experience for children is so far removed from the adult experience. For adults, it's a time of stress, money worries and bickering. For children, it's full of charm, excitement and wonder.

When I was a small boy, Christmas was always fabulous. It might have never snowed, but the delight of the season seemed to either mask my Parents' constant rows or soothe them into getting along with one another for a short while. If they did fight, I didn't notice.

The morning always started with my dear Mother having to come and wake me because all my brothers and sisters were desperate to open their presents, and no-one was allowed to do so until we'd all had breakfast and sat around the pile of gifts by the plastic tree in the living room.

Most children would be up at the crack of dawn, desperate to see what Father Christmas had brought them. It would take a lot more than an old man in a red coat with a beard to wake me before ten o'clock when it wasn't a school day.

Some things never change.

I still love my bed.

On one occasion, I woke to find a scooter actually on my bed! The sound of the door closing had stirred me from my sleep. I saw it close. But hey, it was still dark. I put my head back on the pillow and that was it until the next morning. I remember being slightly annoyed at not being able to stretch my legs out because the scooter was on there. Don't think I was a spoiled brat, I wasn't, dear reader! No! But my sleep was more important than anything else to me.

The next day, I told my Mum that I'd seen Father Christmas leaving and that he'd woken me up. Nothing was ever left in my room again. Poor Mum. I expect she loved doing that, too!

Another time, I wrote to Father Christmas and asked for a Grifter bike. They were all the rage at the time. Christmas morning came. As usual, Mum brought me downstairs and into the living room. No bike. My heart sank. Father Christmas had forgotten poor little Minge. Mum could see I was down-hearted.

"Perhaps it's in the kitchen?" she said.

There was a bike in the kitchen. But it was no Grifter. It was a girl's bicycle. And the saddle had a rip in it.

My Father was a mean peice of shit.

He could afford £300.00 for a wig (which was an awful lot of money in 1980) but couldn't afford to get me anything other than a second hand girl's bike for Christmas. I'll never forget that.

Another time, when I was a much younger boy, Father Christmas brought me a wee doll! I had asked for one, after all. Mum spent most of Christmas afternoon knitting clothes for it. She was such a dear. I didn't have a pram or a cot for it, but I wasn't bothered. Then, Mum had a brain wave! Under the stairs was my old push chair! She got it out for me, brushed the dust and cob webs off of it and, voila (or is it voici?) - my dolly (who was soon Christened Suzie under the tap in the toilet) had wheels!

Later, that evening, our darling cat, Smudgie, was found curled up in the push chair with Suzie! I wanted Dad to take a picture of the wonderful sight, but he said it was a waste of a photograph. Tight sod.

I have next to no photographs of my pets as a child.

Smudgie loved the push chair. He even let me put one of Suzie's bonnets on him and take him for a ride up and down the alley. He was such a lovely pussy.

Smudgie came to be called so because he had a white and ginger face with a black mark over his nose, just like a smudge. Curiously, the smudge shape went all through his body, on the roof of his mouth and on his tongue! I adored him for this, but mostly, I adored him because he was like Bagpuss. He was a big old thing who would let me pick him up, put him on my head, let me take to bed and stay there, slyly eat my unwanted dinner (as I passed it to him under the table) and follow me around outside as I played with my wee friends.

I loved him so much!

Then he was involved in an accident with a car and died. My brother Mark found him. Screaming, he took Mum and I to the road where he laid. The image that sticks in my mind is of his tongue hanging out - far too much. It seemed far too long. Later in life, I see that this is what happens to people after they've been hung. I don't know what happened to the poor cat that made this happen to him, but it did upset me greatly when the penny dropped.

Our lounge was usually decorated with wallpapers left over from jobs that my Father had done in other people's homes. He was a builder and decorator, you see. One wall might be flowers and leaves, another patterned with Roman soldiers on chariots while the other two walls had something plain. There was a short period where all four walls were different. The zig-zags, stripes, dots and swirls made visitors sick, so that soon had to be amended.

So, you see, dear reader, Christmas decorations didn't add much to the ambience of our living room. It was always wild and vivid as it was. The foil chains and pendants largely went unnoticed. Until Mark and I made some decorations with old baked bean tins! He did get in trouble for using the drill, but we were applauded for our artistic bent! About fifteen cans were strung together, knots keeping them well apart, after being wrapped in various different patterned Christmas wrapping paper. Mark put his Six Million Dollar man in the middle can. He wore a simple red hat (made from the finger of an old glove) and I made him a beard by cutting out a paper shape, colouring it in grey and sticking it to the bionic man's face with about fifteen feet of cellotape. No-one commented that it should have been white. Mark liked to swing the bizarre decoration around the room. Everyone laughed, until it hit Mum's friend in the face.

Another reason for loving Christmas was the warmth in the living room. It was perhaps the only day of the year when the fire was on all day! I loved it. Central heating is so municipal, so clinical. Bring back fires, I say!

Another Christmas, I asked for a xylophone. I got it, too. I took it to school in the new year. Mrs Flemming put together a band with a few children who had their own instruments and a few that didn't. The school posessed a piano (which the Deputy Head Mistress played - and rather well), a drum, some recorders, a triangle and a set of maracas. Our Christmas gifts brought my xylophone, a guitar, a flute, a banjo and two battery operated organs into the picture. Our sound was amazing and we played with gusto as the children sang hymns and songs during assembly. I felt great, separate from the other children, yet included. It was a feeling that made me feel warm inside. I'd never felt it before.

I still love that feeling of inclusion. The thought of being ostracized fills me with horror.

Incidentally, the story of the word ostracize is a very interesting one. In ancient Greece, the people would vote on who to eject from the city once a year. Of the two candidates, one was chosen by whomsoever had most pieces of broken pottery in their alloted pot. In ancient Greek, a broken piece of pottery was called an ostracon (don't quote me on the spelling!)... Interesting, innit!?

Lordy! Look what I've just found! Click here.

Christmas came to a horrible end when a school teacher told the class that Father Christmas didn't exist. She told us our Parents put the gifts at the foot of our beds or around the tree. She said children shouldn't be lied to.

Bitch.

Oh, gosh, I've been rambling again.

Sorry!