On getting older... and Christmas when younger

(Written 24/12/2016)

The year to come will bring a significant birthday. In late April, I will enter my seventh decade of life, and while this anniversary seems unbelievable to me (and I hereby give notice that I refuse to act my age, given that I've never been this old before, so I don't know how to), it also strikes me that I've been terribly lucky to have been born when I was. And where I was, too.

After all, I got to see all the good bands when they were playing nearby 2000-seat halls for 75p a ticket, rather than at some distant arena for £75 minimum ticket price. In the case of several bands, I got to see them before iconic members died (Led Zep, Steeleye Span, The Who, Doctor Feelgood and many more), before key members left to twiddle elsewhere (Deep Purple, ELP, Genesis, Yes, Fairport Convention et al) and I got to see those who are now legends of folk and folk/rock at sweaty upstairs rooms in pubs where the "Folk Club" charged 25p entrance. (John Martyn, Al Stewart, Magna Carta, America, Silly Sisters, Jake Thackray, Decameron and I'll stop there lest younger people burst into tears.)

I was born on Hyde Park Corner, at St George's Hospital. It's now The Lanesborough, one of the most exclusive hotels in London. Despite moving to Portsmouth when I was eleven, I shall always count myself a Londoner, and lucky to be so. It is, after all, the best capital city in the World.

Of course, like every Londoner since BC became AD, I'll say that it's not the place it was. I remember walking back from church on Sunday mornings when there wasn't a car, taxi or bus to be seen on Oxford Street. I remember walking past the railings around the gardens of Buckingham Palace with my mother and seeing the two Royal children (Charles and Anne) playing there. I remember fogs (not smogs) so thick that, standing on the pavement, it was impossible to see the kerb. I remember the consternation in the Kings Road when one of the butchers shops closed and reopened as a "boutique", and a pub reinvented itself as a "discotheque", whatever that was. I was born to parents who remembered sheep being grazed in Hyde Park, and at junior school I was taken to see one of the last farms in Greater London.

What's more, I was born to a mother whose family is so extended that compiling a family tree is impossible, because nobody makes paper that wide. My grandmother was one of seven siblings, my great-grandmother was one of nine. All the siblings survived long enough to marry and produce an astonishing array of relatives. Most of them stayed close to the regions of their birth, a thin triangle bordered by Swindon, Marlborough and Hungerford, apart from the rebels who struck out for Newbury, Wilton and Perth, Australia. As a child, I firmly believed that I was related to Wiltshire, so bewildering were the crowds of people claiming to be aunts, uncles, cousins and all the great- and -removed
permutations of those titles.

I usually only met those relations at Christmas, when we left London for Auntie Dolly and Uncle Joe's for the holiday. Dolly lived in Aldbourne, a village near Marlborough so small that you'd have to buy one of the larger-scale OS maps to find it. It was a proper village, too, with a brook running through it, a duck pond, three popular pubs, a tiny church, a Hall where the Squire lived and several small farms close to the centre. Dolly lived next to one of these farms, and it wasn't unusual for their cows to break through Dolly's hedge and churn up her back garden.

When I was a terribly young lad and we lived in Chelsea, we didn't have a car, but as Dad worked in a garage he was usually able to borrow a car for Christmas so that we could hurtle off across Kings Road, north to the Brompton Road where we could join the traffic on the Great West Road for all points Wiltshire. (The M4 had not been invented back then, as there was no need for it.) If Dad couldn't borrow a car, getting to Dolly's meant a bus to Sloane Square, the Tube to Paddington and the train (steam!) to Hungerford, where my Uncle Joe met us in his Morris 1000 that had an interior that smelled of well-polished leather.

Dolly rented a room and her lean-to conservatory to the village doctor, who made them his surgery and waiting room. This meant that most of the village passed through her house during the year, and at Christmas there were many gifts of game (probably illegally sourced), fish (ditto), pork products, joints of beef, jams, pickles, chutneys and much more besides. As you'll imagine, Dolly kept a very good table. Young that I was, I saw nothing out of the ordinary in eating pheasant or partridge, despite my chums at school in London claiming never to have heard of such dishes. I just thought that was what people ate in the countryside.

When we lived in Chelsea, Dad worked in Fulham, so I remember the bustle of Christmas Eve with Mum making sure that all the packing was done in time for Dad's return home with whatever banger he'd managed to borrow, so that we could set off immediately for Dolly's. Arriving no later than Christmas Eve was vital, as you shall shortly find out.

When I was very small, I was put to bed at an early hour with strong advice to go to sleep before Father Christmas arrived... but oh, what a bed I slept in! Dolly didn't have central heating, so the bedroom was rather cold, but buried under heavy blankets and snuggled into a real feather mattress, I was as warm as toast. As I grew older, though, I was allowed to stay up late and go to Midnight Mass at the tiny church with Mum and Dad, and one of my favourite Christmas memories is of walking back to Dolly's house down what, these days, would be impossibly quiet streets, seeing Christmas lights winking in the windows we passed and being greeted by complete strangers with a cheery cry of "Happy Christmas!" I daresay some of them were rather beery cries, but many came from simple seasonal celebration.

Then it was off to bed, hoping that I'd manage to wake for the true magic of Christmas, and the story I intended to tell when I started this rambling tale.

If I was awake, the first indication that something was up would be the sound of faint music in the distance, as if someone in the next street had their door open and the radio on. The music would stop, then a minute or two later, it would start again, but nearer this time. It would stop again, and then come, very clearly but quietly, from outside Dolly's house. The time would be about 3 a.m., and it was the Aldbourne Silver Band playing carols around the village. They always stopped outside Dolly's house to play for her because... well, everyone knew Dolly. They played every year without fail, in rain, in falling snow, in sharp and clear frosty weather, and when they were done it was usual to pull up the ice-rimed bedroom window and quietly call out "Happy Christmas!", receiving the response "Same to you, and many of them!"

My strongest and most abiding memory of Christmas is of listening to the Aldbourne Silver Band in the darkness of the small hours of Christmas morning. It was a fine thing to lay in the comforting warmth of my feather bed and hear a muted "It Came Upon The Midnight Clear" from the road below.

Once the band had covered the village, they made their way to the tiny church, and climbed the tower. Anyone who has ever climbed the tower of a tiny church will appreciate the difficulty of maneuvering some of the larger instruments in a Silver Band up those many uneven stone steps, but they did it. By this time, it would be about five in the morning, and some of the village farmers would be waking, breakfasting, and starting the labour of feeding their animals or milking them. And now, no muted carols, the Band gave it some real welly from the top of the church tower, so that all Aldbourne could hear one of the more rousing Christmas anthems like "Hark, The Herald Angels" or "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful".

The Christmas Day that followed brought the exploration of the pillowcase of delights that Father Christmas had inexplicably manged to smuggle into my bedroom, a lunch of turkey, the very best chestnut stuffing I ever tasted, and... well, *everything*, really. Then came present-opening and reverent silence for The Queen.

Boxing Day started quietly and ended loudly, because that was when The Family (in bewildering permutations) came to visit and have tea. "Tea" was an extended meal that often started at 3 p.m. and could easily still be going four hours later to accommodate late arrivals. Entire granaries of bread were consumed, as were metric tonnes of cake, and a clipper-full of tea dispensed. I may be exaggerating for comic effect, but I promise you that the most people I ever saw sit down to tea at Dolly's was in excess of forty.

Christmas at my Auntie Dolly's - I wouldn't exchange those memories for a big clock.

Dolly died, suddenly, in the early 1970's, a few years after my Uncle Joe passed away, and that was the end of the Christmas trip to Aldbourne. My Dad died some twenty years past, so now I cook the Christmas and Boxing Day meals for Mum. And I still can't make chestnut stuffing like Dolly did.

When I retire to bed this Christmas Eve, though, I'll drift away remembering the gentle kindness of strangers calling out "Happy Christmas!" from silent streets, and imagining I can hear a Silver Band in the dark and snowy distance. There will be one, too, though it's a very far distance - because to this day the Aldbourne Silver Band still patrols the village on Christmas night, playing carols for the delight and comfort of those who will hear them. I know this to be true, because one of my cousins who plays the B flat bass in the Band assures me that it is so.

My dear friends, I wish you the finest of Yuletide cheer and hope that these memories have entertained you.

Love, light and peace to you all..