As I am doomed to spend the fourth Christmas in a row by myself, I am amusing myself by thinking of years in the past. Like most children, I loved the excitement, and it was always a very happy time of year. It was not without its issues, however, so here are just a few memories to be going on with – there will be more to follow.

So, I am remembering…

THE YEAR OF…

… THE BIRD

Dad always left buying Mum’s Christmas present to the last minute – and I mean the last minute. He’d have drinks with his workmates in the pub on Christmas Eve (he never had more than two pints in a sitting) and, on the way home, stop off at wherever was open, to grab whatever he could, as staff were pulling down the shutters.

This particular year, he arrived home to show me what he had bought and, as he opened the large leather case, I was expecting to see jewelry – probably a tiara, given the size of the box.

When he lifted the lid, there was a china bird: a truly hideous, blue and green china bird. I knew Mum would hate it. She wasn’t a big bird fan anyway. When I was very young, we had a budgie called George, and she liked him, but that was about it. I think she went off birds after that because she lied to me my whole childhood, telling me that when George died, he had “flown to a hot country.” Even at the age of three, I pondered how he had managed to open the cage and fly so far, when just coming to the door of his cage to peck me seemed to take it out of him.

Christmas morning… the long-awaited present was the last to be given. Mum opened it and tried to feign excitement. “Oh, how lovely.” Dad: “You like it?” Mum: “It’s… lovely.” Oh God; I knew it.

Fair play, she waited until the turkey was in the oven before letting her true feelings come out: “A bird? A china bird? What on Earth made you think I’d ever like a china bird?” It was the first present returned to the shop on Boxing Day.

… THE CUSH

My brother Nigel and I adored Christmas, but what we specially loved was trying to find out what we were getting. This involved lots of poking around in cupboards for weeks beforehand, checking Mum’s catalogues for marked toys, waiting for the post, hovering at the top of the stairs after being put to bed, trying to glean any giveaway information. I once discovered a two-wheel bike hidden under a blanket in their wardrobe. Mum went ballistic the year that my record player and Nigel’s tape recorder were delivered when Mum and Dad were out. We tried to come up with all sorts of plans to pretend we hadn’t seen what was in the packages, but the words “gramophone” and “cassette player” on the unwrapped boxes kind of gave things away.

I can’t remember which year we decided just to look at the back of Mum’s diary, but it was when big floor beanbag cushions came into fashion, so I would guess 1969, when the first designs hit the market. I would have been 11 and Nigel eight and we had just moved to Bridgend from Newport. I remember nagging and nagging for one of those cushions.

Finding Mum’s diary, we read the list our respective Christmas presents at the back, and they were all in code. Master spies that we were, we quickly cracked what “cush” meant. Come Christmas morning, we were up at 5am, as always, and went to the living room to inspect our stash before Mum and Dad woke. The sight of the two unwrapped cushions made us giggle hysterically, and we went back to our bedrooms so that the family could all go downstairs together, and Nigel and I could feign surprise.

Except we couldn’t. Well, we managed it for about five minutes and then had to come clean. To this day, we still cry with laughter about it. You had to be there, really.

… THE TURKEY DISASTERS

On Christmas morning, we all used to go to the neighbours for pre-dinner drinks. The turkey would have been prepared and stuffed early in the morning – the giblets pulled out for stock, the inside of “the bird” dried out with a tea-towel, accompanied by Mum shouting at Dad “You know I hate it being called the bird!” What was it with her and birds, I wonder?

Returning from the neighbours, it was only ever an hour before the turkey was cooked – and, on one occasion, the tea-towel inside it.

That wasn’t a great year, but not as bad as the one in which we returned home from the neighbours after three hours to discover that Dad hadn’t done the one job he was required to do on Christmas morning – turn the oven on.

Stay tuned for more Christmas stories!