Magpie Tales#45

I ‘d love to be able to tell of wonderful Christmases when I was little but my memories of them isn’t all love and joy. Except for one.....I was brought up in a home that had very little money and so Christmas wasn’t like it is for some children today. But I had one aunt (my late mother’s eldest sister ) who was determined that I would not lose out. One year she bought me a dolls pram. I can see it now, red with a hood. My other aunt had made a pillow and covers for it and it became my best present I had ever been given. We walked into the one street town after Christmas day, me pushing my red pram with my best doll sitting up in it. I think I was four or five years old. We met my aunt’s friend Jenny, who worked for the local Dr and she had a present for me, she quickly put it under the cover in my dolls pram, with the words, ‘ssshhh don’t show anyone look at it when you get home.’


It was something I had never seen before, and it tasted of sunshine and it was so sweet. It was a large orange and part of the first to arrive in Britain after the Second World War. How strange that this is the best memory I have of Christmas of when I was a child. How different it is for today’s child, what would they say if someone had given them a gift considered precious and it turned out to be an orange? Somehow, I don’t think they would have been as delighted as I was that day and when I think back I can almost smell that orange.

But isn’t that the same as Christmas is today, a simple story of a simple birth but so precious but that is overlooked in the mad scramble for card giving, presents that cost much too much and children who want everything and more. Too much rushing around, too much food and too much fuss and we forget what it is all about.

Perhaps my lowly Christmas’s  all those years ago were the best.

Snow. Magpie Tales#43

What does snow mean to you?

To me, it is a cosy time inside.

Porridge for breakfast,

And toasted tea bun mid-afternoon.

Warm gloves and long stripy socks.

Hats and big coats.

Watching the snow flakes,

Feeding the birds.

Walks in the meadow with the dog,

Fun in the drifts against the hedge.

Laughing at snow balls thrown.

Home again to homemade soup.

Being retired has so many wonderful days!

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We are snowed in at my house in Essex so this is very real to us!