Both boys had got bikes for their birthdays. We’d started paying for them back in January and had made the final payment with two weeks to spare. Brian probably didn’t deserve his but we’d spent so long paying for them that it would have felt daft not to let him have it. And to be fair to the little sod, he was grateful. He was first down the stairs, as always. Came bouncing into our bedroom like he was still six years old and announced that it had snowed overnight and that he’d been awake since not long after midnight. He hurried us out of bed like there had been a fire and woke his brother by hitting him on the head with a pillow until he opened his eyes. Then it was dressing gowns and slippers and Brian led the way downstairs and into the kitchen where he found the Schwinn Sting-Ray ‘muscle bike’ that he had been going on about for the past three years. James had one too, along with a set of pencils and paints and three new toy cars. Brian got some marbles, a book on fly-tying, and a Meccano crane. Between them they had plenty of chocolate and a distant auntie had sent them a Napoleon Solo gun for them ‘to share’. Before breakfast, Brian had shared it with his brother by shooting him half a dozen times in the back of the head.

John got me some new slippers from the posh shop in Carlisle. I’d got him some aftershave and a new hat. Brian did me a sketch of a cowboy being trampled by a horse (he’d seen it in Bonanza) and James got me a necklace with an amber amulet. I didn’t ask him where he’d got it or how much he had paid but it was a lovely thing and he had smiled when I said I liked it.

I got started on the dinner while John was still washing up the breakfast dishes. We were having turkey. It was a big bugger and had arrived two days earlier in a hessian sack. It had taken an age to get the feathers off and even longer to scoop them all up. Feathers always made me sneeze. I was doing it with roast potatoes, mash, three types of veg and bread sauce. We were having half a grapefruit each for starters and there was enough brandy in the brandy butter to put a scorch mark on the roof when we lit the Christmas pudding.