h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

NaJoPoMo 2015 Bobstafford A Message in a bottle Christmas past.

24. 11 2015

So it's nearly Christmas, season of joy and goodwill, fair enough but how is that supposed to work. The pressure it puts on people makes it anything but that.

Christmas is measured by the amount you are prepared to spend/borrow, the TV is no help showing vast quantities of food huge ranges of expensive gifts, it has got out of hand, the pressure on people is enormous. Its not the same a lot of the love has gone for many people it has been reduced to duty.

My best Christmases as a child was when we stayed with my grandparents in Kent, they were lovely. Sleeping in the attic bedroom that my father used as a boy, I could hear the passing traffic something I could not heat at home another novelty.
Even in the early 1960's they had no electricity so I had a candle very exciting, the grown ups had lovely oil lamps polished brass and coloured glass shades.

Their house had an old cast iron range in the kitchen parlour, bright copper pans and no TV (as a youngster that was hard but I soon got used to it) grandad was very entertaining. On Boxingday the cousins came round more gifts, (I still have the Rupert the bear book). In the afternoon a walk to Aunt Tills (Matilda or Tilly) house, an old thatched cottage white walls inside and out and spotlessly clean. And snow Christmas always seemed to have snow. Then home by agreement even at that age I had a small present and had my big one when we returned home, one year it was a Hornby electric train set, excellent, an engine the "Princess Elizabeth" and 3 carriages.

The year before the big present was a bright red bike, and that was brilliant, the milk was still being delivered by one of the last independant milkman and he still used a horse drawn milk cart, and if I followed him on the bike I got to look after the horse as he delivered the milk. Every now and then one of the local women came out to sweep up the fresh manure for the roses.

One thing I do know is that I wish I could go back for a visit.


I do hope that there are many Hoo Tooers that had a good old fashioned family christmas like mine, when they were young. And can have a traditional Christmas and have a proper happy traditional holiday this year as I intend to with family.

[Amy P]