December 1949
Dear Diary,
I’m so excited. Christmas is nearly here. The chimney sweep’s been so that Santa won’t get his suit dirty. Mr. West, the coalman has delivered a sack of coal ready for a fire in the front room on Christmas Day, and I’ve asked mum if she can send Father Christmas a letter saying I would love a doll. I’ll do it myself next year when I can write better. I’ll hang my stocking in the fireplace though. I may get an orange, some nuts or coloured pencils.
I live in a Council house in Furnace Lane, on the left, with my mum and dad. My bedroom is at the back of the house and I can see right across the fields. I can see our long back garden with a little lawn for me and our dog, Sally, to play on and dad’s vegetable patch at the bottom, and all the way down one side is a line for mum’s washing on Mondays. I like Mondays because the copper in the kitchen where mum boils the washing, smells lovely and steams up all the windows.
After Christmas it’ll be 1950 and I shall be starting school because I’m four now. I want to go to be with other children, because there’s only me, but I don’t want to leave mum on her own all day. Still, she has my grandparents, a sister and brother and lots of good neighbours in the village so she can always visit one of them. School starts when the bell rings at 9 o’clock. I shall walk down Furnace Lane, with mum of course, and cross the village green on the footpath that runs from the corner by the chapel straight across to the school. There’s another one that goes opposite to the shops. If we took that one I might be tempted to jump the stream that runs along the side of Hillside Road. Still, I just remembered, the cows are on the green some days, chomping away at the grass so we might have to walk along The Tops. She said she’ll fetch me home for dinner at 12 o’clock but I have to go again at 2 o’clock. I’ll probably fall asleep in that time; it’s so quiet while dad’s at work. He’ll be home when it gets dark for his dinner, then perhaps he’ll have a
game of snakes and ladders with me before I go to bed at 6 o’clock.
I’ve started Sunday school and we have been learning all about the baby Jesus and singing hymns. When dad fetches me home we go up Church Lane to see Mr. Potter’s horse. It’s a big horse and it pulls the milk cart round the village so that we all have fresh milk delivered to our door. The lady who delivers it doesn’t need to tell the horse when to stop, it knows.
Well, I’m about to have one of my Nan’s boiled eggs with soldiers for my tea. She has lots of hens in her orchard and I help her collect the eggs sometimes. It’s about this time of year that they seem to die, maybe they get too cold.
Polly
Letter published in The Prattler – December 2019
The Nether Heyford Prattler 