A Little Christmas Piece, by Peter Morford

We’ve got it all wrong about Christmas.  I  can’t believe that we would choose the most miserable part of the year to celebrate a birth.

    I remember how it used to be, years ago in Ratcliffe Highway. There’d be deep snow, carts stuck in freezing mud; cold ‘ouses, a dunny shared with fifty neighbours, yet we workin’ blokes was supposed to be ‘onest and ‘appy. Yet somehow we’d save up for the feast and ‘ide little gifts in secret places for the nippers to find.

     On the day – it was only a day- we’d light a good fire and live off the fat of the land. I remember one Christmas in particular.  We already had one goose and then I won another. I was lucky when the girl in the market gave it to me so that we ‘ad two on the table. The nine of us– our parents couldn’t come - sat round and gorged.  The wife and I had a good supply of Porter beer while our grubby-faced nippers drank lemonade and played with their toys. It was a picture of Dickensian bliss.

      I was dozing in front of the fire when there was a thunderous banging on our front door. The Runners!

      Within two days I’d been tried for stealing a goose and a sack of carrots and told I would be deported to Australia. My tearful family saw me off. “It’s only for seven years,” I said. “I’ll write.”

       “But you can’t write,” the wife  said.

       “I’ll learn.” They waved at me from the dockside as we caught the tide and sailed away.

       For the long voyage we travelled in the crowded, rat-infested hold.  It was ‘ome from ‘ome. I met a little gang of rustic coves from some place called Tolpuddle and when I asked them what they’d stolen they beat me up.  I don’t know why.

        A few months later we landed at Botany Bay and I joined the forced labour gang. Among the cut-throats and thieves was one educated man. He must have taken a fancy to me because during the three years he taught me to read and write.

        Then I got my freedom and was given a smallholding a short walk from Botany Bay. Soon, with a new wife and family I could celebrate Christmas properly. We ‘ad food from our own fields and the best grog that money could buy. A barbie on the beach! Perfect. Tiny Tim would have enjoyed it.

        Christmas would never be the same again, thank goodness.