It’s Christmas…Time

“A Christmas Carol” is the much loved seasonal tale of a miserable old miser shown the error of his ways and embracing the spirit of Christmas. This, well, this it isn’t that.

Almost forty years ago, when winter’s were proper “newspaper on the windscreen at night” winters, I found myself only a few short days away from Christmas. I’d just broken up from school for the holidays and there was a single frantic weekend before the big day, with all the presents for the family still to buy.

Through unacceptable levels of thrift for a small boy and a curious charitable quirk, unusually this particular year I had accrued quite a pot of cash. Oddly our RE teacher at school, who did everything other than teach us RE, had challenged us to raise money for a local charity pledging us a third back out of his own pocket on anything we raised as an incentive. Usually the sums raised by my classmates would range from an unenthusiastic few pence to maybe a pound, however they didn’t have fathers who “worked” down Birmingham’s wholesale market. Whatever the other father’s did for a living, bankers, doctors, solicitors, architects none had a direct line to the well of human generosity that existed in an old fashioned market. The morning that I’d given my old man the donation form and small bag to hand around to his market mates he’d returned home with a little over £150 stuffed inside it. The fact that half of them were “three sheets to the wind” when he’d asked them had absolutely nothing to do with it.

The following Monday, a startled but unchurlish RE teacher duly coughed up the promised third, fifty quid in crisp notes. I was all set for a Christmas of untold Dickensian generosity and good cheer.

It was now the Saturday before Christmas, the last weekend. Without the luxury of internet ordering in those archaic times, every poor soul would have to trudge through icy bustling streets to do all their shopping. It would, from past experience, be absolute bedlam.

That morning it was a bitter cold start. Mummified in gloves, scarf and thick coats, Mum and I both set off early to the local shopping centre. Mr Parry’s Antiques shop was on the way and rather than trudge for half an hour in the freezing cold all the way up the hill from the shopping centre to get there, I’d persuaded Mum to quickly drop me off first, just so I could pop in, say hello and wish Pat a Merry Christmas.

She parked up and I leapt out, immediately pressing my chubby little face, glowing red through cold, against the still frosty display window. Just for a moment or two, just before entering the shop and making the old Victorian bell above the door sing out, just to see what new treasures might have come in. A few minutes and a “Merry Christmas” later I was back in the passenger seat as Mum and I set off towards a frantic full day of Christmas shopping.

I had my whole family to buy presents for. Nan, Granddad, Hughie (an old Scottish lodger who had been living with my grandparents for so long he was family), Dad and my Sister. Mum had already been dealt with secretly a week earlier after school. I had crossed the road to the small suburban Chemists in a row of Victorian shops opposite my Nan’s terraced house. Small boys sadly know very little about the lofty world of women’s fragrances so I’d simply gone for their prettiest bottle. A “paint stripper” of a scent, almost guaranteed to burn flesh if ever used, but at the top of their price range being a good four pounds worth. It was secretly wrapped and left in the lower drawer of my Nan’s dresser for retrieval nearer the big day. This left me with a smidge under sixty pounds in my pocket. More than enough to buy everyone a wonderful gift and have plenty to spare. I could, like a last chapter, repentant Scrooge, be liberally generous in my last minute shopping, at least that’s what I thought.

As the days shopping progressed I was proving an oddly thrifty and reluctant present buyer, dragging Mum into all the little discount shops which had popped up. Mum picked up gift after gift “what about this for your Nan?” she asked as I would then carefully inspect the price tag, like some small festive assassin with a furrowed brow, simply shaking my head as a reply “no”. The drawstring of my coat’s hood was tied too taught around my jaw to easily speak.

The shops I should say were bustling, cheek by jowl, pushing and shoving through thick knitted woollen buffers like so many dodgem cars. Mum still had all the important “proper” Christmas shopping to do, Smith’s, Woolworths, Beatties, Marks and Boots, let alone Thornton’s and the Indoor Market. We went back and forth to the car, loading up the boot as bags became too heavy to lug around, yet still I was failing abysmally in my present buying charge.

Lunchtime arrived and we headed to the self service restaurant on top of BHS (British Home Stores). I had my customary sausage and chips followed by a slice of strawberry cheesecake, the strawberries so bright, so red and glowing, that describing them as “fruit” may have been against the trade descriptions act. The decor was all brown and orange curved geometry, plywood, black painted steel and thick, thick carpet, it was like diving into the seventies, shag pile, toe first.

“You’ve got to start buying presents Michael” came the firm rebuke as I sat there stuffing a (delicious) cheap fried sausage and chips into my hungry little mouth. I nodded back and knew it had to be done, but I also knew it had to be done at a very certain price.

After Lunch and now that Mum had done the majority of the essential Christmas shop, the present buying began in earnest. Granddad and Hughie ,who were both tricky to buy for, were dealt with in a single blow when Mum suggested she’d buy two packets of 20 Silk Cut (they both smoked like chimney’s) though I would pay for them, that was four pounds gone. Next I happened upon a discount Christmas aisle in Boots and found the obligatory Brut gift set for £1.99 for Dad, the fact it was in a cellophane windowed display box made all the difference, it made it a proper gift. Next Nan had a favourite talc for a little under three pounds which just left my Sister to buy for. Much ineffective browsing led Mum to suggest chocolate, I mean who doesn’t like chocolate? So an oversized seasonal bar of Cadbury’s finest was acquired for a little over two pounds. All in all I had done my Christmas shopping that day for eleven pounds, not because I was mean, not because I was awful but because it HAD to be eleven pounds and not one penny more.

That morning, before the shopping began, I had called into Mr Parry’s to wish him a Merry Christmas, I have told you that. What I didn’t tell you, or my Mum on that day, was that Pat had just gotten in a pocket watch.

We had a pocket watch in our family. It was my great grandfather’s and everyone believed it to be gold (years later, before it was stolen I found out it was only plated). Back then it belonged to my Great Uncle Will who was, and I say this as family, as mad as an enormous big bag of mad badgers. On the few visits I would make to his little council house, mainly to see the watch which he wore constantly in a stained waistcoat’s pocket, he would sometimes, without any warning, get out his air rifle and shoot it into the parlour room wall during afternoon tea, picking up the squashed spent lead pellet and handing it to me as a gift. It was likely to be the only thing I was ever given by him as he was notoriously “careful” with money. Once cycling over thirty miles, there and back, to a hardware shop where he’d purchased a 40w light bulb for a few pence six months earlier. He undertook this marathon to elicit a refund or replacement from the manager as the bulb had “popped”, in his opinion, “too soon”. Amazingly he got his replacement lightbulb, though they’d have probably given him anything to get rid of him, but I digress. The point was I had, for very many childhood years, yearned for an old pocket watch, that seemed utterly unattainable but that very morning Pat had shown me a very nice one indeed.

I can see it now. A plain smooth silver case with a top wind beneath a rose gold bow, the hinges were in rose gold too, very stylish yet understated, the reason for which became clear when you opened the back. The back and the dust cover bore import marks for Glasgow 1922, concealing a movement that had been machine polished so meticulously with overlapping circles that it looked like pearlescent fish scales as you turned it in the light, the main wheel was engraved with the manufacturer’s name “ROLEX”. The ticket price was £60, by no means a fortune, even then, but still a little over everything I had in the world, all I had, resting in my trouser pocket that morning, earmarked to buy Christmas presents for others. Pat turned the ticket over to inspect whatever little code he had written on the back of it, looked down seriously at my small, clearly desperate face and said it could be “forty seven pounds, but not a penny less”. I could afford it but only IF, in buying ALL my family’s Christmas presents, I spent no more than eleven pounds.

It was dark by the time we’d finished shopping and even beginning to snow as we drove away, up the hill from the shopping centre. I asked my Mum if we could call in once again to see Mr Parry, whose shop lights were now glowing bright yellow in the darkness, casting beams across a pavement only lightly dusted with a hint of fresh snow, picking up the flakes as they fell.

This time Mum parked and came in with me as I excitedly ran in, immediately asking to see the watch again. It was heavy, smooth and shining in my hand, just as I remembered it, better. I duly reached into my pocket and handed over every last penny I had, exactly forty seven pounds. My mother all at once understood, seeing clearly the days events falling precisely into place. She smiled as she raised a resigned eyebrow, shaking her head at me (this now was how it always would be) as I, grinning from ear to ear like some awful child sized unrepentant Scrooge clambered back into the car, heading home for Christmas, glowing, a ticking pocket watch fluttering away the festive seconds, clasped firmly in my hands.

Eventually, years later, I sold the watch at one of my first antique fairs for not much more than I had paid. Like most things I do regret letting it go. As for the unspectacular Christmas presents I’d bought, they were all graciously received. Looking back now though, more than anything, I would love to be buying presents for all those people once again, enormous, expensive, extravagant ones. That’s the real joy and pleasure of Christmas, not that I realised it as a small school boy all those years ago.

So, if you can afford it in these austere times  go out and buy Christmas presents for all your dearest friends and family, for those you love, spare no expense. (It’s later than you think). Either that, or perhaps, if you tend more towards the “bah” and “humbug” of the festive season, just go out, like I did as a small boy, and buy yourself a Rolex instead.

Merry Christmas.