Christmas 1973

 

It is Christmas morning 1973 in a terraced house just outside Manchester.

It's a classic Christmas.

One of my favourites.

Merry Christmas Everybody is top of the charts and number one on my Christmas List is a Doll's House.

I wake up on Christmas morning and here it is in my living room.

Christmas wishes really do come true.

I didn't know at the time but my mum had bought it second hand from a toy sale held by the local church.

Each night in December, after work and when I was in bed, she stayed up late to clean and re-paint it.

In 1973 I am seven years old and in Mrs Williamson's class.

She smells strongly of BO.

A dour squat woman, she paces up and down the rows of desks and makes the class recite our times tables.

Suddenly she stops, smashes a ruler violently on a desk before firing  scattergun sums at unsuspecting souls.

She never actually hits anyone, but the threat of menace hangs in the air along with her BO.

I am glad there is no school for two weeks.

I can relax.

My brother got a fort, also repainted by mum and purchased from that same toy sale.

I always thought grandma was very old but she is just two years older than I am now in that photo.

It is cold in the terraced house I share with my mum and dad and brother.

There is no central heating, just those heaters attached to the walls so the red ladybird dressing gown is very welcome.

The gown was in my Christmas sack, but I am guessing Father Christmas picked it up from our local Ladybird stockist, Woolworth's in the precinct.

Later that month I would spend my Christmas money buying my first record from that same branch of Woolworth's - Little Jimmy Osmond's Long Haired Lover from Liverpool.

I would play it on the gramaphone you can see by the window.

And who knew that 12 years later I would actually meet my very own long haired lover from Liverpool but that's another story.