I like sitting in the gloaming as the festive season begins. It might help me capture some more Christmas spirit as I write this year's final story. My lamp radiates a soft yellow glow, creeping into the corners of the room, shadows on the floors and walls. It conveniently masks my untidiness, suggesting a sense of order that isn’t there.
It’s the silence, though, that feels more familiar, a sense of quiet restfulness. It descends like fog, neither damp nor cold; its comfort and warmth more like a plush velvet blanket, thick, heavy, smothering.
I’m sitting in the dark at 2 Rathmore Drive, Oxton, Birkenhead; secondary school started a year ago. I’m in the lounge, where the Christmas tree casts short shadows from the fairy lights. The VHS under the TV is blinking as a programme records.
School has broken up, which leaves a week and a bit before Christmas Day. There are other signs that the festive season is approaching apart from our tree. The nutcrackers are again on the coffee table, the first full dish of assorted nuts ready for Dad to tuck into. He’s the only one who really enjoys them. I’ll crack one or two, but it’s not easy, and my interest will soon wane.
He needn’t worry too much about not having enough of his favourite Brazil nuts. There are reinforcements in the shape of a box of Just Brazils, smothered in dairy milk chocolate, sitting on top of the chest freezer in the garage, waiting his attention. Not as healthy as the ones sitting on the coffee table, and there’s more competition for these; they’re deliciously morish. The circular tin of Quality Street is also out there unopened, and the tangerines trapped in their orange string bag, plus vegetables, turkey, giblets already gone, now bubbling in a pan for future gravy. It seems to simmer permanently on a backburner. A reminder that the clock is counting down and the essentials for the big day are slowly coming together.
The kitchen fridge is already full to bursting, partly because of the inconvenience of still needing to eat before Christmas. Fortunately, the garage provides a perfect walk-in annexe.
Dates are bought every year. They sit on the table next to the nuts, often unopened until Christmas is over. If you can’t find them, they’re on the dining room unit, on the shelf above the stereo, already relegated.
Occasionally, Dad encourages Mum when the festivities have started; we’re watching TV usually. Go on Margaret. Why don’t you have one? he says just before popping another Just Brazil wanting someone to join him. The dates are a bit too sweet for me, he adds.
There’s a little fork conveniently located inside the box. Most likely, she won’t. Instead, they’ll end up in Rice Krispy squares, smothered in a thick layer of Kake Brand chocolate, when we’re looking for a sweet fix again in the new year.
The Christmas cake was made a weekend in November. It’s in a tin, also in the garage. There’s nowhere else for it. It’ll be iced this week, and Mum will make a Yule log, a rolled-up sponge cake with chocolate buttercream on top, a sprinkling of icing sugar, and a small wooden robin perched on his spring somewhere in the middle.
A big food shop is coming. We go to the market in Birkenhead (opened in 1835) two or three days before Christmas, especially for the cheeses, free-range eggs and maybe a jar of pickled onions. Well, it is Christmas.
There’s an unmistakable sharp, acidic smell as you enter the cheese hall, completely different to a modern deli, where the overwhelming odour is overripe blue cheese from our Gallic neighbours. Here, the stalls are populated with cheese makers from Ormskirk and Skelmersdale in Lancashire, selling crumbly white and pale yellow Lancashires and Cheshires, Cheddar if you really must. And we must. Mum loves a bit of cheddar.
The cupboard upstairs, underneath the eaves in the big bedroom, is also busy receiving goods. Dad has been bringing cases, half cases, and the odd wooden single bottle coffins from the car for a while now. The wine and occasional single malts are enough to keep him and Mum going for a year. They don’t drink every day, not yet. When they finally do, it’s only a hot toddy, wine at weekend. Only sometimes.
If Dad isn’t bribed with booze, it’s diaries. These are much more interesting. He guards them jealously. How can he use all those week-to-view diaries or the smaller wallet-sized ones requiring mouse-like writing? Perhaps it’s because I want to journal. I wanted to journal last year but never made it beyond the third week of January. Once school started again, the days began to slip by. Instead of ignoring my blanks, I tried to play catch-up. Then I stopped.
I spend hours pouring over the bumper double-week issue of the Radio Times. Mum buys it in plenty of time, and I give it my full attention. My immediate need is daytime television before Christmas. It’s usually poor, even by my standards, but Christmas means the BBC will try harder. Repeats welcome.
BBC1 doesn’t start broadcasting until 10:00 am with the Magic Roundabout. Fortunately, it’s only 5 minutes before Champion the Wonder Horse, then cartoons, before it shuts down again at 11:00 am for an hour. ITV bail me out with Stingray before Rainbow with Zippy, Bungle, George and Geoffrey. It’s too young for me.
Aside from the blockbuster comedy shows like The Two Ronnies and Morecambe and Wise, which are expected, the question is how good the films will be. Are we ready for yet another screening of John Wayne in True Grit or Michael Caine in Zulu (great film)?
Both main channels want us to watch the circus, Billy Smarts or Chipperfields, neatly staggered so you can watch the lion tamer cracking his whip twice. The Black and White Minstrel might not quite be primetime, but it’s still on BBC1 at 1:30 pm when it’s heating up in the kitchen.
Filmwise, there isn’t much competition. The BBC is showing The Odd Couple, a good film starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, but it’s already five years old. ITV’s alternative is Von Ryan’s Express, an even older film, either side of their 10:00 pm News.
Time for bed.