You'd Better Not Pout

When did you stop believing in Santa Claus? 

If you find this question difficult (largely because you were still hanging on to your belief with grim determination) then please stop reading at this point.  For the rest of us, I’m willing to bet that this particular moment is ingrained in your memory.

When you consider the elaborate belief systems with which we indoctrinate our children, only for them to discover with each passing year that these firmly held beliefs are groundless, it must say something about the human spirit that we are prepared to believe in anything, ever again!  In evidence, I submit The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy and, last but most definitely not least, Father Christmas. 

My own particular crisis of faith, with regard to Santa anyway, happened when I was 10 years old on a Saturday night, just before Christmas, 1964. 

At the time, we kept a pub (the idea had been that the pub would keep us, but it didn’t quite work out that way).  The pub was of an old-fashioned design, in which the living room and kitchen were tucked away behind the serving area whilst all the other living accommodation (bedrooms and bathroom) were upstairs.  In order to get from the living room to the bedrooms, it was necessary to cross The Passage.  The Passage was really a corridor to allow access to the Public Bar and Smoke Room but also contained some tables and seating, and our solitary fruit machine.  Access across The Passage to the bedrooms was fairly straightforward in the week, when only a small group of hardy customers would be huddled by the serving hatch or by the fruit machine.  At weekends, however, The Passage would be crowded with revellers in assorted degrees of intoxication.

The pub was equipped with a woefully inadequate coal-fired boiler that just about managed to heat the public rooms but left the bedrooms as something of an arctic wasteland.  Mum therefore insisted that I change for bed in front of the fire in the living room, to avoid frostbite or hypothermia.  Unfortunately, this meant crossing The Passage to get to the stairs, now attired in pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers.  During the week, with a little careful timing, I usually managed this largely unnoticed.  On a Saturday night however, and particularly at the weekend before Christmas, the only way across was to force my way through the smoke-wreathed throng.  This was always acutely embarrassing, and a journey I tried to complete as quickly as possible.  On this occasion, however, my rapid transit was thwarted by my youngest uncle suddenly appearing from the crowd at the bottom of the stairs and grabbing my arm.

“I just wanted you to know that I’ve left your present with your Mum for Christmas Day.  Thought I ought to tell you because, of course, you don’t believe in Santa Claus any more do you?”  He laughed and winked knowingly.

I muttered my thanks and swallowed hard.  In that moment, I didn’t believe in Santa Claus, but right up to then I had believed with the sort of dogged fervour that only children can muster.  Of course, my compatriots at school had, over the years, come to the conclusion that Santa Claus did not exist but I had hung on to my faith, largely because the alternative didn’t seem too inviting and I was keen to keep the magic of Christmas in one form or another.  Now, in one sentence, it was gone.

I still miss Santa.  Christmas without him has never been the same.  But I suppose if anyone is responsible for that curious bonhomie that arises at some point on Christmas Eve and has disappeared without trace by Boxing Day, maybe we should thank the vestige of Father Christmas, and be grateful.  In the words of the late, lamented Santa, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas!”


You can find this story, along with a host of others, in the new bumper collection of stories Crutches For Ducks at Amazon.co.uk or at Amazon.com, available until Christmas Day at the ridiculously low price of just £1.99!

At the setting of the TV - Part 2

‘Listen with Mother’ was a superb programme that provided a mix of songs, nursery rhymes and stories in which the pictures, provided by your own imagination, were always far superior to those in the later television equivalent.  Quite what a modern child would make of those very correct accents and pronunciation, I would hate to guess.  A personal favourite was the nursery rhyme about the various horse-riding styles of certain noblemen and countrymen (you either know it or you don’t and if you’re my age, you probably do) which was always great fun but had very little contemporary relevance.  I’ve tried singing it to various nephews and nieces in recent years (which is a form of cruel and unusual punishment according to the U.N.) and they still find it hilarious, even though the subject matter must be even more obscure to them than it was to me all those years ago.

I can’t remember when we first had a television but it must have been in the late 1950s and it was definitely second-hand.  It was, of course, black and white and boasted as many as two channels to choose from but the only thing I really remember about the television, is it going wrong.  It was exceedingly temperamental and took great offence at the buses that stopped at the Bus Stop (unsurprisingly) outside our house.  Each ring of the conductor’s bell sent the picture into spasm and sent out a noise that could waken the dead.  In its later years it became eccentric and started to demand sacrifices from its subjects in order to work at all.  At first this was a hard-backed book strategically placed on a particular spot on top of the set (I don’t know how we discovered this, we just did), then two, then three…before it finally joined the great technological scrap-heap in the sky, it demanded no less than eight hard-backed books before it would even consider warming up (remember when things had to warm up before they functioned?  There is no need to be like that, madam.)

I have this theory, for what its worth, that there is a very fine line between sophisticated technology and magic.  This is particularly so in the early days of any technology when all of the elements function but (in Eric Morecambe’s immortal phrase) not necessarily in the right order.  With an established technology you can reasonably expect an instant response to commands, with the actual work going on unobtrusively in the background. Making anything happen with new technology is essentially an act of faith and the internal crashing; banging and frequent failures are painful evidence of the work in progress.  This is true of computers today (well, mine anyway) and was definitely true of televisions then.  As a result, we technologically challenged individuals (or ordinary mortals if you prefer) are reduced to superstition to make these ‘magical’ devices do what we want them to do, hence the books on top of the television set.

A classic illustration of this early technology/magic theory is my first experience of stereophonic sound.  My youngest uncle had a passion for traditional jazz, particularly during the brief phase when it was, to all intents and purposes, the pop music of the day.  This featured in ‘Saturday Club’ presented on the Light Programme each Saturday morning by Brian Matthew (he’s still there, on Radio 2 now of course).  At some point, the BBC conducted a series of experiments in broadcasting stereophonic sound which took place on Saturday mornings.  Now my memory tells me that this involved ‘Saturday Club’ because I feel sure I remember the wonderful sound of traditional jazz appearing in the middle of my grandmother’s living room as if the artists were actually there.  The ‘magic’ element of all this was that this amazing sound was created by playing both the wireless and the television at the same time, with one channel of sound coming out of each.  Of course, this only worked if both pieces of equipment were strategically placed in the room and my uncle would spend ages carefully positioning each for maximum effect whilst I sat and waited with eager anticipation.

I started to write this particular memory with some trepidation because, although I was sure that I recalled it accurately, I had never met anyone else who had experienced it.  Then, through the medium of the internet, I was delighted to find the following “1958 - First investigations into stereophonic broadcasts (Crosby system).  Experimental broadcasts begin using television sound transmitters for the right hand channel and the Third Programme transmitters for the left hand channel” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/milestones/1950s.shtml.  Accessed 27.04.06).  So it really did happen, but somehow I doubt that the Third Programme played traditional jazz.  I have always been reluctant to tell anyone about this, wary of them calling for the men in white coats with the specially tailored jackets, but now I feel vindicated (they can’t touch you for it) so, if you have any memories of this incredible experiment, I would love to hear from you.

At some point, if you’re really unlucky, I will tell you about my encounters with coin-operated colour televisions, eccentrically designed cassette recorders and Dansette record players with enough small change piled on the armature to buy a fish supper. But I really must go now, I have to record a programme on the DVD recorder and I think a couple of carefully positioned volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a brief prayer ought to do the trick.  Just try not to say anything to annoy it, whatever you do.