Stocking up on the season of goodwill

It never varies. I just ensure that at some stage during my two-day sojourn, I walk down to the ford to check the stickleback and bullyhead population, wander past Micky Lucas's house to see if he's working in the garden, stroll down to the ruined mill where we had the stone fights... and then have a period of quiet reflection in the old schoolyard.

Except that it's not a playground any more. And the building next to it is not a school, either. Both ceased to ring to the shouts and squeals of children sometime in the early 1970s when the Government of the day decided, in its accursed wisdom, that this little academy should be closed and its scholars sent to the nearby town for their education.

I thank God such social vandalism came too late to affect me. And as I stand on that same pitted asphalt where I had once pulled Maureen Gardner's plaits and gazed in awe as Micky won the widdle-over-the-boys'-office-wall contest, I reflect on how complete the destruction has been.

The school had been the first to go. Then the pub was bought up, its name changed from the Greyhound to the Hay Wagon and, as if the point hadn't been made obviously enough, a real wagon wheel was placed, crassly, on the roof. Saints deliver us.

Then the off-licence and stores went, followed by the post office. Meanwhile, the new people at the pub upped the price of beer and the villagers voted with their feet.

But then the school buildings were transformed into a social club and everything returned to a kind of normality.

But with the old school gone, the village had lost its beating heart. For this had been where the youngest citizens in this population of 350 had taken their first shaky steps on life's highway.

It had played a crucial role for generations.

Indeed, I remember old people who had been born in the village, educated there, left at 14 to become farm labourers or gone into service, and rarely ever ventured much further than the parish boundaries.

How times change. Young professionals now live in the labourers' cottages and the original village families are to be found only in council houses.

It's a familiar story, one that must have been enacted many times the length and breadth of rural Worcestershire and any number of shire counties.

But the social club became a kind of final frontier, a last bastion, a veritable redoubt of defiance standing in the way of that black joke called "progress".

So, standing in that old school yard, it was not long before my thoughts turned to long-lost, carefree days... and, in particular, memories of the sheer joy that accompanied every Christmas season.

Living in a village in those days was a very insular experience. During the 1950s there was only a handful of cars most people cycled, travelled on motorcycles or relied on what was, compared to these days, an extremely efficient bus service.

But when the snow came, as it did every winter, the village could be cut off for some time, and this was always a source of great excitement.

Especially when, one festive season, it actually snowed on December 24, presenting us the next day with a perfect Christmas card scene.

This, together with the efforts made by the school's only teachers, Mrs Butler and Mrs Clowes, ensured that every child had a wonderful time in the build-up to Yuletide even if the consumption of jellies and blancmanges at the end-of-term party invariably meant many an over-enthusiastic child was sick later that night.

A few weeks ago, I was sent a delightful book by a village couple I've known all my life. This narrative was by the villagers of my childhood, their stories put down in print for the first time. It was essentially a lament for a lost shangri-la, a rural England that has now gone forever.

Yet the evidence of these country people, powerful in its directness, provided an evocative testimony to the inevitability of change and how lives can be irretrievably altered by factors beyond the ordinary individual's control.

There was one account that particularly appealed, and that was the story of one William Leatherland, who had arrived in the village about 1906. It is a charming little tale and I cannot resist reproducing part of it here.

My earliest recollection of Churchover was when my grandmother brought me here from Birmingham after my mother's death.

I arrived here on Christmas Eve but I am not quite sure which year. I arrived at Rugby when it was quite dark and Grandma took a hansom cab in which the driver sat up top at the back and spoke to the occupant through a flap.

This intrigued me no end. Of course, there were no lamps in those days, and so we walked gently along, the cab lit by candlelight until we arrived at Grandma's.

It was not long after an introduction to Grandad, whom I had never seen before, that I was packed off to bed.

I remember vividly Grandma filling the bed warming pan with hot coals and rubbing it around in the bed to take the chill off. This was Christmas Eve and I thought that Father Christmas would pass me by because he would not know that I had arrived in Churchover.

However, to my delight, in the morning I had a stocking filled with small things that boys of my age delight in, and so realised that I had not been forgotten.

I was to learn later that some of the villagers, knowing that I was coming, had done this. I was grateful, of course, but then thought little more of it.

As I got older and learnt of the real things in life, it dawned upon me that the Christian spirit had prevailed in those village people's hearts, and it was from that small beginning that I tried to mould my life to do to others that which I would have them do to me. All through my life I have tried to be kind and charitable to those around me.

The villagers were obviously very kind to William Leatherland, deputising for Father Christmas, and making sure the little lad's stocking was filled.

Nevertheless, I'm sure Donner and Blitzen could have made it up the hill with their master's heavily-laden sleigh, despite the ice and snow.

These kind acts embodied the meaning of that festive season of 1906.

It would also be comforting to think that, given a similar set of circumstances, people might still rally round today, just as they did back then.

And those were the thoughts running through my head as, once again, I stood in the old school yard and thought of that Yuletide of long ago.

Anyway... have a good one and I'll see you all on New Year's Day. Happy Christmas, everyone.