The annual trek to the attic, to collect up all the Christmas decs which were chucked up at the end of last year, and cart them down the ladder to display yet again, has started in earnest!
This year is going to be very different, with Scrobs acting solo, after my dear Senora popped off in the Summer, but between me and the Houndess, we're going to light up the rooms and blaze away, as The Senora would have threatened me with all sorts of torture, if I didn't, and loss of tinctures was always going to be at the top of the list!
We've only been here in The Turrets for about thirty-five years, but the amount of clobber which accumulates in the attic still seems to grow, witout any rhyme or reason, and of course, there is always something up there, which you just cannot throw away!
Here in the pic, are two Christmas albums I was given nearly seventy years ago! The Brer Rabbit book came from my dear sister, who was about eleven or twelve then, and still going strong! I was an avid fan of Brer Rabbit, and the stories were all informative, fabled and easy for young impressionable children to read and admire! I would have been seven then...
The Kit Carson album of 1956, arrived when we'd all moved to the new house that dad had bult built. It would have been our second Christmas there, and I was well into owning several cap guns, dad's old army bush hat, holsters made from cardboard, and all the paraphernalia that comes with being a cool cowboy! (Come to think of it, that was quite a change from the other book in just two years, but we all grew up playing outside, getting muddy and driving wooden carts around the woods back then, and life in the lanes and fields was a necessity...)!
Reading the stories again opens up such a huge chasm of how children absorbed fiction back then, the drawings were all there of course, but the writers always seemed to capture an eight-year-old's imagination, and ensure that the stories, however beyond reach, were still understandable, likeable and so really captivating!
And I haven't even started the rapture on finding all my Rupert Bear albums yet...
24 comments:
Ah yes, Brer Rabbit was one of my favourites too, the one I remember best was the briar patch story. Writers did know how to stir the young imagination in any number of ways. I was a cool cowboy too, with a silver cap gun.
Fleabay can often satisfy an urge for reliving our youth but sometimes the urge can misfire. Two books I bought recently after an ill-judged flash of nostalgia were -The Adventures of Tammy Troot ( I must be getting old: it is awful ) and The Boy's Book of VC Heroes ( reads as well now as it did in 1960odd)
For me it was a heady mix of Frank Richards’s Greyfriar stories… Billy Bunter, Quilch, Frank Nugent, can’t recall the other names… was Edith Wharton! Merry Christmas Shanks, I hope the ringing of those church bells doesn’t keep you awake.
Brer Rabbit seemed to be everywhere,AK! The wily old fox yarn still makes me wonder a bit...
Apparently, toy guns now have to be brightly coloured, but that's to make them look like toys to suit the wokery!
Boy's Books, and Girl's Books for that matter, were the norm at Christmas, TheJ...
I can easily remember the Hotspur album, and Tiger, as well as The Eagle albums, which are now, in fact, online - I think!
They won't keep me awake, Lucien, my old friend, as there are so few ringers these day - they need three to even start up!
Billy Bunter used to live near us in Rye, but you know that don't you!
Did he..? One’s memory cannot be relied on these days I’m afraid.
I’m sorry to hear you lacking church bells… they fill me with huge nostalgia. Surely you are the man to get this going again..? You must have a few old compadres with time in their hands…? Is Dennis no longer available… or Dr. Cuddler? Mr. P. Kromm?
Sorry forgot too add the old monica.
Modo, Dennis sadly succumbed to The De Luxe version of Wayfarer's Disease, a sort of rash which occurs on one's body after successive treatments in The Grannex...(Q.V., if you can find it...)!
I did try to realign myself with the ropes and sallies locally, but after being ignored for a goodly time there, which was certainly not like the old days, I just left them to it!
Church Bells calling the faithful, walking the dog in the drizzle… stumbling across some fellows playing cricket in the field behind the church! A pint of beer down the Bell… wonderful at this time of year. Nothing like it. Certainly there is nothing like it here in Yaoundé.
Some Great Great Aunt (on mother’s side… Germans)… walked out with Hans Tappenbeck. She always left flowers on his grave at Christmas. When she died and left me all her rubber shares it was on the understanding that I would continue the tradition.
How are you for rubber Shanks?
Anyway the dressing come off Friday and then with my new Irish passport I can walk the lanes of Sussex once again, without all that harassment from women’s groups and the gutter press.
Who bowed I might well point the old Bristol towards the high wealed and call by for a tincture.
Knows*
Lucien, as for rubber, I'm more a leatherette man really, it doesn't adhere to the hairs on the arms! I'm pleased you're able even to find the grave; the whole yard is designated a wildlife area now, so it usually unkempt, but give me a rough idea of where it is, and I'll look out for it when walking the dog this morning!
My door is open, Lucien, but beware the dog, who will lick you all over before you cross the threshold...
By the way, wasn't Hans Tappenback the 'colloquial' name for a local worthy, Herr Graunish of Ulm?
What..? Ehh..? No dear boy you misunderstood me. The beloved of my late aunt died here in Cameroon. She never married… couldn’t I imagine as she suffered the hereditary Gambon’s Lambada. So I was the grandson she never had.
However tomorrow I leave here never to return. My plastic surgeon Herr Hinkle is very pleased with me… he says my own mother wouldn’t recognise me! So I will again take up my British residency. Get the old Bristol off the bricks, and drive down to my place in Sussex, get the dust sheet off the chez.
I will no doubt pay a visit to my dear friends and protectors the ******** family who have their gypsy camp set up for winter in the woods behind Bayham Abbey.
So the wheel of life comes around again.
I know full well that because of my long association with the al-Assad family, and now with Bashar’s exile to Moscow, what everyone will be saying… that Mr. Modo is back in Hove with his tail between his legs.
To this I can only say that there has always been a bed for me at Bushra’s bungalow in Dubai… but like my old friend Wilfred Thesiger once said ‘While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming. Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.’
Is it cold enough to unpack my grandfather’s tweed?
Ah back online!
Lucien, I thought you were on an island with a name like the chart in an opticians!
Of course, you'll be so very welcome here, at The Turrets, and with due warning, Miss Rita Chevrolet will have cleaned the hose of any evidence, from top to bottom!
If you're tired of Bayham Abbey, and the prolferation of old car parts, (Don't park the Bristol anywhere near the far field, there are snakes there), the pub, 'The Brown Trout' just along the road in Lamberhurst has been bought by Roger Daltrey's company, Lakedown, and is the place to visit - so I'm told!
Yes, the cold is the peremating kind, so certainly The Harris Tweed!
Do you remember thaose school jackets?
I see you too are an early riser… are you laying dogo under the hedge to catch those foxes after your bins?
Siacedi ysgol..? Mae fy nghof yn fy pallu.
Anyhoo… if you’re asking whether I attend CCB as a pupil, then the answer is no.
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