Inspired by Beth Kempton’s course (more details here)

The thing I remember most about that day was that it had snowed outside. When I was little a white Christmas didn’t seem to be the rarity it is nowadays. I don’t know if global warming really has meant that the snowy winters I remember are diminishing, or that the ones I recall are just the ones with snow. The main reason for my recollection of the snow was the inhibitory factor it added to the fact I had received some roller skates from Santa that year. Not the teeth jarring, metal, over the shoe contraptions of previous times. But navy blue roller boots complete with yellow stoppers and rainbow flashes.

Christmas morning when I was little felt truly magical. It was the 80s so every one’s relative poverty was sort of the same. Nobody asked for outlandishly generous gifts in my world as we feverishly circled items in hopeful anticipation from the Argos catalogue. So, it didn’t feel like a disappointment that I hadn’t received the skates. Coming from a family of four kids in 8 years and Mum working as an evening supervisor in a vegetable packing factory instead of a primary teacher so shecould take care of us meant that on some level I must have thought it unrealistic even to ask.

Our house was cold in the mornings, the central heating running off the back boiler of a coal fire with a glass front and bath water provided by immersion heater. Hot water bottles and Candlewick bedding to keep us warm and a treasured victorian style flannelette nightgown in blue and pink stripes with a frill round the neck are core memories of winter in that house.

Before I was old enough to be assigned the dreaded chore of filling a coal scuttle each day from the bunker outside, I loved sitting in front of that fire. The glass front meant it never got painfully hot against your skin like the blistering, fireside tartan inducing heat of my Granny Pearson’s open fire. Its metal guard with the holes in it always seeming like scant protection between the spitting embers and my, probably highly flammable, nightie. The fire at home, with its thick piled, carved out Chinese rug, was somewhere to sit, Vosene scented hair drying as we kept warm after a Sunday night bath.

So, remembering waking up on Christmas morning to the fire already lit and the multi coloured fairy lights on the tree gives me a nostalgic yearning. My mum still favours the kitch coloured lights over my self consciously tasteful warm white palate. I love her for this. I have neither the number of children, the financial constraints nor the family business that my parents had. My house is warm on waking, heck my fairy lights are voice activated and run on a timer! But one thing we share are children who are delighted by what they find under the tree. We aren’t a family of huge extravagant gifts but I am blessed with children who easily express gratitude for every gift given and never appear to want more than has been bestowed on them. In that respect we are similar.

On that morning we opened our gifts and I loudly pronounced the tiny, hand knitted clothes for my Sindy doll-clearly crafted out of pure magic and sparkly lurex yarn by mythical elves as I slept, as the best gift ever. I had no idea that my hard working, sleep deprived and endlessly creative parents, had hidden more gifts behind the long velvet curtains that hung in front of the window seat under our diamond leaded glass panes.

The light flooding into the room reduced the glow from the tree lights and the fire as the pure white light of Christmas morning, reflected from the snow outside, fell on another stack of wrapped gifts. And among them, the coveted roller boots, confined to wobbly kitchen and back hallway practice until the pavement outside revealed itself.