Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘When it came to presents, however, the magazine was sterner:

Nobody wishes to waste money on the merely pretty or transitory thing, but even the useful gift can and should be a little festive. If possible, it should be something the recipient really needs, but which he or she would consider a slight extravagance to buy.’

‘They had nothing left but life itself. Neither of them knew the other had survived. They were reunited on Boxing Day, their first wedding anniversary. They had no home - they had to move in with my cousins. It’s a miracle that my sister and I were even born and that we are alive today.’ (3)

‘My mother lost the baby she was expecting and woke up in a padded cell in a psychiatric hospital because there was a shortage of beds. Nobody told her this was the reason - she was terrified, thinking she must have gone mad. My father had to have an operation on his back and on that very day he had a letter from the government telling him he was a deserter...’ (2)

‘My parents were married on Boxing Day 1939. They’d brought the wedding forward because it was the only day that everyone could get the day off. In November 1940 they were in Southampton and they had a direct hit on the house. My grandparents were killed, my uncle was killed, another uncle was blown - in his bed - out on to Southampton Common.‘ (1)

‘Mum had announced ‘I’m going to make a cake.’ We all looked at each other. ‘A what... what with?’ Dad exclaimed.
Not being involved, I have no idea of the ultimate ingredients, but I do know that carrots, powdered egg and National Wholemeal breadcrumbs featured strongly. It certainly looked good. Taste? Well, debatable is the word, but we scoffed the lot.’

‘Our neighbour must have seen us, because she called out to my other, ‘Hilda, what are you doing in the shelter? There hasn’t been a siren.’ ‘No,’ said Mum, ‘but we heard the guns going off.’ It turned out the crashing she’d heard was snow falling off the rood - and we’d been sitting in the shelter for about two hours for no reason at all.’

‘Sunday, 13th
Thought I was going to be clever and get some Chinese figs for Xmas. Waiting in shop for ten minutes only to be told: A sweet ration and a half! Ruefully left the shop. Don’t know what they will manage to get at home. As long we we have Bread Sauce with an onion, I don’t mind.’

‘Mum worked very hard looking after us all and I remember one Christmas my big sister and I decided to bake a cake for her as a treat. Mum was out at the shops - queuing up for something, no doubt. We were so proud at how the cake turned out. When she came home and saw it, she was absolutely livid, as we had used up the whole of our ration of sugar for the week.’

‘He stared down into the dark. He’d often said to himself, and to others, that there was nothing in the dark that wasn’t also there in the light, but in truth, he knew differently. There was one thing in the dark: fear. Fear that smothered and consumed and twisted.’

Audiobook version

New podcast about Christmas

‘Christmas has always been a time for charity. Following the example of their Queen who annually distributed her Royal Bounty to well over 2000 people, the Victorians threw themselves into charitable works with enthusiasm, giving Christmas Boxes - presents of food and money - to all the deserving poor of the parish, usually on the day after Christmas.’

‘One of the most popular of all Victorian Christmas games was ‘Snapdragon’. A shallow bowl filled with spirit and currants was put on the floor and the spirit was ignited. The players then tried to snatch the currants out of the flames and put them into their mouths. The trick was to move quickly and to close the mouth over the burning currant and extinguish the flame.’

‘Bob Crachit’s salary was fifteen shillings a week. How could he afford a goose of such magnificence? The answer lies in one of the great Victorian working-class institutions - The Goose Club. Even the lowest paid worker could enjoy a goose at Christmas with his family by contributing to his local Goose Club a small part of his week’s wages throughout the year.’

‘For most middle-class Victorians, mattins on Christmas morning was one of the focal points of the day. It was only after duty was done that the presents and the midday meal could be enjoyed. Among the working classes, however, religious observation was by no means so widespread. Tradesmen still traded - bakers kept their ovens alight to cook the local families’ Christmas geese’

‘The first known collection of English carols was published in 1521 by Wynkyn de Worde, and a fragment of it remains in the Bodleian Library. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries many carols were undoubtedly sung, but few were published, it was the Victorians who collected, composed and published old and new carols’

Audiobook version.

‘The jocks weren’t stupid. They knew the odds had shifted. They were severely in trouble. Not one of then was willing to stand up for Miranda, or for us, and that didn’t shock me at all. What shocked me was that they didn’t take their beer with them when they broke for the door and stampeded out into the night.’

A lot of this work is just large excerpts from texts from the time, which, even though I like reading them, feels a bit like cheating, especially as there is more of that than the author’s actual commentary and the rest of the pages are mainly pictures.

Audiobook version

‘But no matter when the presents were given, and no matter what they cost, the Victorians were adamant on one point. It was the thought that counted. As the poetess Ella Wheeler Wilcox put it: ‘... it is not Art, but Heart, which wins the wide world over.’ The humblest home-made gift was more precious than a casquet of jewels; the child’s sampler worked with love more treasured than silver or gold.’

‘Sometime in there, his dad got screaming drunk and his mum started taking Valium and still, Shane really didn’t care. He sat alone, mostly. He thought about nothing. He just... existed. They were stuck in some crappy motel room with borrowed clothes and no money and no home, and Lyssa was gone. So what did any of it matter anyway?’

‘Prince Albert did not bring the Christmas tree to Britain, as commonly thought, although he certainly gave it a general popularity. It was another royal consort, George III’s Queen Charlotte, who introduced a German tradition that was readily taken up by the British aristocracy.‘

I wasn’t sure about the letter format at first but I an actually really enjoying it now. The narrators of the audiobook version are fantastic too.

‘The enormity of it shook me. The illegality of my actions was simply presumed without any need to show proof. My own purchase of land and property was presumed to be through deceit, and so I was stripping of everything, whether illegal or not. I was presumed guilty, not proven to be. So much for the balance of the law.’

‘I was full to the brim with self-pity, and because I no longer felt brave I wept for my own weakness, for all I had lost. That the gifts given to me by Edward out of love and gratitude should be snatched back in spitefulness, destroying the physical evidence of Edward’s place in my life.’

‘It was the Council of Tours of 567 AD that decreed a religious holiday for the entire twelve-day period from Christ’s Nativity on 25 December to the eve of Epiphany. Fasting was banned, though that was balanced with the Council’s injunction that there would be forty days of contemplation and fasting beforehand.’

‘Christmas in the Middle Ages, in common with Ancient Rome’s Saturnalia, was a time when ‘the world turned upside down’ and those at the bottom of the social pyramid were allowed to let off steam. It was believed that the sanctioning of Lords of Misrule at Christmas would reinforce the correct social order for the rest of the year.’

“he created two images of yourself and His Majesty, binding them together to make an indissoluble bond. Thus Edward’s infatuation with you. Their words - not mine. Your physician made two rings with magical properties for you to put onto Edward’s finger, one to refresh the King’s memory so that you would always be in the forefront of his thoughts. The other to cause forgetfulness of all else but yourself.”

‘Two men. One old, one in what should be his prime. One fading, slowly as the years took their toll, the other racing to his death. Unless there was a miracle, there was not one man in the country who would wager a purse of gold on the Prince outliving his father. Edward might be fifty-nine, the Prince a mere forty-one years in comparison, but I knew who would die first. So did Joan.’