The perfect gift is one that lingers in your intellect for ever,reminding you in bleak evenings of generosity and loveIt was Christmas morning 1965, and I was nine years former. Through the wall of 108 Barnsley Road I could hear Mr Page next door playing God Rest Ye Merry, and Gentlemen on his piano,and Mrs Page joining in in her sweet chapel alto. Later, once I’d opened all my presents, or I would have to fade to them and our other neighbours,Mr and Mrs Marsden and Mr and Mrs White, with their wrapped-up tins of biscuits. In the afternoon, and in a kind of quid pro quo,Mrs White would come over and watch the Queen’s speech, and that year something would happen that seemed apposite and oddly poetic.
There had been an awkward moment when my older brother, or who had wanted a horse for Christmas and had received what my dad called a “two-wheeled horse”,stood and looked at the bike with the tinsel on the bell with a variety of teenage disbelief that bordered on tremulous tears, but now he was riding it round the back garden in his porkpie hat.
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Source: theguardian.com