Scribbling away
Patsy Crawford
So here we are, Christmas just around the corner, and it’s off to the shed to dig out the stripey bag and its contents of frayed, tatty and fly-specked decorations.
We’ve come a long way together. Some of those bits of tinsel go back to when the kids were in prep.
And here’s something grandparents must look out for: where to put the ice-cream stick angels, reindeer and snowmen the grandkids have made and which you feel duty bound to shove on the mantel piece.
You thought those days had gone once the kids had grown and flown but no, here’s the grandkids coming at you armed with festive tat.
My mum had no such feelings of accountability. Once she’d made the required expressions of gratitude (which in hindsight I see were hellishly strained) she’d wait a few days and turf the stuff out.
It probably came from having four kids and a pile of dogs belting about under her feet and the fact we kept using the kitchen for table tennis, crammed comics and books in every nook and cranny and stuck a dartboard on one of the bedroom doors rendering entry fraught with peril. Things piled up.
Hanging onto plasticine elves, cardboard angels and those things little girls used to make out of a piece of mirror, patted-down moss, beads and half dead flowers wasn’t on.
Mum put up with a lot, especially at Christmas time. We considered we had carte blanche to do whatever it took to decorate the house.
What’s more we usually did it at peak cooking and preparation time.
The minute mum approached the old mint green stove that now screams retro we’d get out sheaves of crepe paper and make streamers.
Then, irrespective of the fact she’d be trying to knock out little fruity pies or make bread stuffing for the poultry, we’d set up the ladder and clamber all over the kitchen to hang them.
They were invariably luridly coloured and never quite matched, so crisscrossed from one corner of the room to the other would be thin weedy streamers in some parts and in other parts streamers wide enough to tether a horse.
Of course, they fell down almost immediately or half fell so whoever was trying to get to the back door risked being garrotted.
I can see why mum abandoned the kitchen and took to the washhouse where she’d cook the Christmas ham in a vast copper boiler.
It wasn’t just getting away from those bloody streamers that spurred her on.
That wash house soon echoed to the sound of ha-has and chortle-chortles, the tops being wrenched off bottles and the lighting up of Turf cork-tips as friends and neighbours dropped by to check progress of the ham.
By Christmas morning of course she’d be worn out, but she’d put a brave face on the boxes of hankies, bottles of Midnight in Paris scent and Winning Post choccies we’d trot out year after year. It’s what mums do.
Merry Christmas one and all! Go easy on the streamers.
