大象传媒

I was about eight years old. All that year my father had been raising chickens and geese. You did anything you could in post war Wales to supplement your rations, the idea was we would sell the chickens and one of the geese and have the other goose for our Christmas dinner. All this was fine in theory, but we never realised how found we would get of those geese. During the summer they became our pets, Millie and dilly became part of the family, following my brothers and myself everywhere. They would often go for a walk by themselves and we children would be sent to look for them, we would search for them calling them by name and eventually they would come running. So Christmas arrived- it was fine killing and plucking the chickens but when it came to those geese-I think even my father had a tear in his eyes. We sat down to Christmas dinner, the goose [was it Milly or Tilly?] the tears were streaming down our faces, could we eat our friend- of course we could, it was Christmas and we were hungry you would have ate it too. I鈥檇 like to say we felt some remorse but we were too full and happy, so we just said a quiet thank you to our old friend and went out to play with our new toys.
Another little tale from that time concerned the blizzards of 1945. It snowed from January to March. The children had a great time, forget your snowmen we built igloos, as for sleigh rides we found the steepest hill and with no worries about traffic we could go from the top of the village right through every street across the main road until we came to a sudden stop when we hit a obstacles. It was not much fun for our parents though, they had the worry of feeding us and keeping us warm. One day my mother heard the baker in the next village had obtained supplies of flour and was baking bread, so she decided to walk there to get what she could. Now the snow was up over the lampposts and frozen solid so it was a little like walking in the Arctic. My mother was very determined however and set off muffled up in layers of clothes scarves and hats with Wellington boots up to her knees. Many hours later she arrived home in triumph, not only had she managed to get 2 loaves but also, from inside her coat where it was snuggling to keep warm, she produced a tiny kitten. I never did find out where she found that kitten or why she brought it home that day, but it is something I remember from that hard cold winter that brings a smile whenever I think of it.

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