Christmas Pressies From Across The Water And Some Rural Christmas Memories.

I remember back in the late nineteen sixties.  My grandmother would send us a very big and lumpy brown parcel tied up with parcel string.  All the way from Ireland.  It was always so exciting and such a joy watching my mother cut the parcel strings.  My mum knew what was in it but me and my brother never guessed that it was a freshly killed Turkey, an headscarf for my mother, some socks ("the stockings" for my dad) and a pair of leather boots a piece for my brother and me.  There would also be a long handwritten letter of about four or more pages.  Telling us all about the happenings on the farm in West Cork and how she was looking so forward to seeing us all at 'hay making' time next July.  

One Christmas my dad decided to visit his parents at Christmas.  He would go down town and pick up some train and ferry tickets and come home and say to my mum:

"Come on pack the suitcases we are going home tonight."  

He always called Ireland "home" although he lived fifty five years in England.  

My mother would not be an happy bunny and we would hear her say:

"But I have not got any clothes ready."  

A couple of hours later and we were on the boat train to Holyhead in Angle-sea.  You could be pretty certain that the sea would be very rough and it would be packed full of people going "home" for Christmas.  Perhaps Chris Rea was on the journey?  Any road.  The sea got rougher and rougher and people were being thrown about and being sick and nuns started kneeling down and praying like mad...  There was black and white nuns and blue nuns but I didn't see any drinking bottles of German wine...  

We lived to tell the tale and we spent Christmas with no telly (just the wireless) for the news and my granddad bought a plastic baby bath and put a blanket in it and made me a cot.  Lovely memories of a time gone forever.