Since my reminiscences will cover a period some sixty to seventy years ago they will be a little sketchy and will be an amalgam of a few of my childhood memories.

Firstly I must tell you that times were very different from today, expectations were not what they are now, for instance few of my friends had more than one present with a book, perhaps a couple of nuts an apple and some silver paper coated chocolate money.

One of my earliest memories was of having a wooden wheelbarrow as my present and a lad in near bye Booths Fields (I lived in King Georges Avenue) stole my wheelbarrow and took it home where his dad chopped it up for fire wood. My dad went after it and brought it home in bits; he repaired it by nailing wooden strips all over it. He wasn't a DIY person so it never had the same appeal after that.

Another Christmas my uncles made me a battle ship and a submarine - the submarine fired wooden torpedoes and, if hit in either of two places, the battleship blew up. (It was great and I wonder what became of them).

We made paper chains to decorate the room but never had a Christmas tree, well it was wartime and I suppose they would have fed the fire rather than decorate the room. Christmas lights were another thing we never had; I don't know when they came in since we were not so many years into domestic electricity and then, during the war, they were never made.

Because of the bombing the cooking had to be done on the cooking range in the kitchen. This was a coal fired arrangement with made of cast iron with a fire in the centre in a raised grate with compartments either side for cooking and a hook over the fire for a kettle to heat up. It took a time to cook and I suppose cooking times were a bit hit and miss according to the heat of the fire; which was governed by the availability and quality of coal. Anyway one year the local baker cooked many chickens in his ovens and delivered them to the local families at dinner time on Christmas day. I remember sitting at the table when he came in to cheers from us all. He carried the chicken like a magnificent prize as chicken was a rare luxury then. Christmas dinner was always followed by listening to the King's speech; I was never a royalist so I never shared my parents' respectful silence.

As I said earlier expectations were not great so we enjoyed what we had and since we never knew any rich people; never felt in any way deprived. Also there was no television or sustained advertising to make us feel other than lucky for what we got. We did, of course, search for presents but they were well hidden so I for one never found them; still it was good to look and added to the excitement of Christmas.