Boxing Day When I Was Young, Shard End, Birmingham…

 Boxing Day When I Was Young, Shard End, Birmingham…

I lived in a council house in Shard End, Birmingham from the age of nearly seven, following the previous six years living with my maternal grandmother in Ward End. The Shard End Estate was on the eastern edge of the city, close to Yorks Wood, formerly Kingshurst Wood, where Scouts, Guides, Cubs and Brownies would camp in those days, until sadly, much of it was built upon.

THE HOUSE IN SHARD END, Boxing Day in 1969...

Boxing Day was when my parents hosted members of the family for a salad tea, trifle, Christmas cake, dates, figs, beer, port, wine and sherry. And cups of tea… Games were played too, which made the evening something to savour for me, my parents’ only child. The ring-board game, previously written about, was the main feature running through the evening, culminating in the ‘Bummer Cup’ being awarded to the winner, that is, my father… 

MY PARENTS ON THEIR GOLDEN WEDDING ANNIVERSARY....

However, I was pleased to be allowed to set up a game which involved using newspaper and magazine advertisements, whereby I would cut out the brand names and from the images, or ‘catchphrases’, the guests would have to guess what the products were. In those days, alcohol and tobacco adverts abounded and there were so many to choose from. Most of the ones I chose were fairly evident, such as ‘Do ‘ave a…’ (Dubonnet), or ‘…washes whiter…’ (Persil) but it was brilliant to find a more obscure item, such as for Marlboro cigarettes, which would puzzle many family members. To guess the brand just from the packet, was sometimes Gaulois, sorry galling, especially for non-smokers…

Ashtrays were actually placed about the house for that day of the year, for various uncles smoked, leaving the house smelling rather rotten on the 27th December. My father had given up smoking in the early 1950s when his insurance agency  job paid too poorly for his income to be wasted on purchasing paper tubes of pungent leaves to stick in his gob and set fire to. This meant that he could suck in the smoke, which could kill. I often wondered why smokers didn’t stand in their sheds, set fire to them and inhale the smoke, then die quickly and save themselves the burdens of wasting money and suffering ill health later in life… 

Anyhow, back to Boxing Day…

'Consequences’ was always a favourite… All that was needed were a bunch of pencils and sheets of paper. We sat around and began by writing a man’s name on our sheets, then ‘met’ and subsequently hid our choices by folding over the top bit of the paper to keep the name secret. Then we passed our sheets to the person next to us, whereupon that person wrote a woman’s name, followed by ‘at’. The ritual continued through ‘he said’, then ‘she said’, then finally, ‘the consequence was’… 

MODERN EXAMPLE...

Clearly, my mum Marj and her sisters Ivy and Ghreta would play the game innocently and that certainly increased the hilarity when the finished sheets were read out. My mum might use my father’s name, so ‘Vic Ray’ could end up meeting the next person’s ‘Jane with the over-shoulder boulder holders’ (my cousin Steve actually used those words); AT Ivy’s suggestion ‘The Fox and Goose’. Uncle Jack might suggest that HE SAID: “I like your cream buns…” then Ghreta might suggest that SHE SAID: “How’s your belly for spots?” And the CONSEQUENCE by Auntie Iris might be: “Two weeks in Intensive Care…” 

Thus the storylines read out by us all were toxic mixes of the naivety and the risqué which contained more and more representations of ‘double entendre’ as the night wore on… Loved it.

The night ended with a card game, known to us as ‘Newmarket’, based on betting on horses, I guess. Four cards from another pack, usually the Jack of Diamonds, the Queen of Hearts, the King of Clubs and the Ace of Spades, were positioned on the coffee table and we all placed a halfpenny on a card (horse) of our choice, plus a penny in the ‘kitty’ in the middle of them.

SOMEONE WOULD WIN WITH THE QUEEN OF HEARTS... 

Once all monies had been paid, the game was played out. In turn, we were dealt to but there was also a spare, ‘dummy’ hand, which the person dealt to first could choose to pick up instead of the one he/she had been dealt. Obviously, if the player had one or more of the four cards (horses) with money on them in the dealt hand, he/she would keep it, but if not, the spare hand could be used instead. If the player wanted to keep the hand dealt, someone else could ‘buy’ the dummy hand for a penny, which was added to the kitty.

The game began with the dealt-to person playing the lowest black card in his/her hand, say the 5 of Clubs, then whoever had the 6, then the 7 and so on, would play them and of course, if you held the King, your hopes were raised… Once you played a card which corresponded to one of the four ‘horses’ in the middle, you collected your winnings from the duplicate card. Then the Ace was played by someone and that player could then place down their lowest red card and the process began again and again, until someone had put down all of their cards and claimed the kitty. 

Obviously, sometimes, money would not be retrieved from one or more of the cards in the middle, making the reward a little more interesting… 

Eventually, one of the four cards in the middle was turned over, so that more money was placed on the other three. Then two were turned over, then three, usually leaving the King of Clubs, upon which quite a number of coins piled up. Whether it was because I was the youngest player and the adults wanted me to win, I am unsure to this day but I often won that last prize on the King of Clubs, which became one of my favourite playing cards, along with the Queen of Spades. Well, she had a sad look on her face. Probably because she was married to a rake (an immoral chap)…  

ME WITH AUNTIE IVY, HER HUSBAND JACK, ONE OF THEIR TWIN SONS DEREK & HIS WIFE NADINE...

Interestingly though, Ghreta and husband Doug, Steve’s parents lived in a bought semi-detached house in Sheldon, whilst Ivy and Jack lived first in Sheldon, then Solihull, then even the precious Knowle, all three bought homes and yet, during ‘Newmarket’, their competitiveness showed, even when losing out on a couple of pennies… Odd that.

MUM & ME A LONG TIME AGO.
ONE COULD DESCRIBE HER AS 'QUIET & SHY', LIKELY WHERE I ACQUIRED THOSE ATTRIBUTES...

And thus Boxing Day ended after midnight, with cigar smoke enveloping the lingering cigarette smoke, as my joy at being out of father’s glare for most of the evening began to wane. 

I loved mum’s salads with the remarkable pickled onions jarred by a person on my father’s insurance round, plus mum’s home-made trifle and Christmas cake. 

I loved Boxing Day too, even though at bedtime it galled me to see my self-satisfied father replace the ‘Bummer Cup’, won for the rings game, in the china cabinet where it lived, year after year, after year…