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A trip down memory lane may be all that is left for us ‘oldies’ to smile about

Dec 28, 2017 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

I read the recent article about Christmas in Guyana and the writer’s memories of his as a child.

My husband and I were discussing ours, comparing memories; while his was not particularly different from any other day, my early childhood Christmases were very different because I was entertained by my grandmother’s stories of hers.  Recently, when I related a few of them to my husband, he laughed his head off.

Christmas Eve was “putting away” night for many families, when they “christened” their new curtains (‘blinds’), floor mats, table coverings, etc. and made their pepperpot, a Christmas Day staple for poor families.

My grandmother lived in a ‘one-room’ short row of houses, with a door at the front, a window at the back, and steps leading down to the yard. There was a ‘doormouth’ kitchen at the side, with a shelf for a coalpot, where the cook could sit on a step to tend the cooking.  She told me one Christmas she made her pepperpot and left it to ‘cool’ on the ‘cooking step’.  Later, when she returned to collect it, the pot had disappeared!

Another Christmas the same fate befell a pot of yellow roses she had been specially cultivating all year.  She lived in a ‘walk-through’ yard with a few rooms on either side; and entry from two streets, so a passerby probably kept watch and pounced.

In my early childhood days, small boys were sometimes given ‘firing’ guns plus a string of caps on a narrow pink paper belt. When I was about age 7, my slightly older brother was given this as a Christmas gift. In those days, horse drawn 2-person carriages, with a driver dressed in black, ran along Regent Street.  When my attention was taken up with looking at the passengers waving, he fired the loaded gun in my ear!  My head exploded. The lookers-on were horrified and shouted at him. I have hated guns ever since. A few years ago, when as a guest at a London Borough Council meeting, along with others, as part of the ‘programme’, I was invited to view an array of guns, I could not.

A Guyanese Christmas, in the colonial days at least, is something to remember and treasure. I remember former high school classmates turning up at my home, announcing “I come for my drink”! What’s to do, but oblige.

A trip down memory lane may be all that is left for us ‘oldies’ to smile about.  May we all have a Happier New Year!

Geralda D

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