The wind howled that Christmas night ...

Well, it is the first Sunday of December and we all need some winter cheer. This marvellously evocative account of a Christmas in Wales by Maggie Redding is just the thing. 

 An Adult’s Christmas in Wales

(‘A’ certificate – for adults only)

With apologies to Dylan Thomas.

'Twas the night before Christmas

when all through the house

not a creature was stirring

not even a mouse.

But at Pantyfer, at Christmas in 1984, this was not strictly true. Life here was raw in tooth and claw and everything was stirring, including spiders in the roof, my Scottie, Haggis, as well as two mice, both of whom were pounced upon by Haggis. They squealed at the death blow, poor little things.

But that was nothing compared to the mass slaughter going on around us – and I do not refer to our next door neighbour – a quarter of a mile down the valley – who had attempted to murder his wife and was securely behind bars by now.

No, I mean the business of preparing for Christmas by every farmer in the area. Turkeys and geese were being made ready for the Christmas table in poorly lit barns, by people in long overalls, heads covered, in snow storms of down and feather. A lucrative trade, it was.

And we, being mini-farmers (in our eyes at least) with our one and a half acres, had geese, chickens and ducks needed to deal with two geese, one for our table the other for that of a friend. They were dispatched according to the advice sought of the RSPCA, after a neighbour, the Mink Lover, we called her, not for her coats but because of her protection of these pests, had complained about our intention.

We had four geese who were terrific watchdogs, setting up a fervent honking and gaggling on the approach over our bridge of anyone, friend or foe, especially, for some reason, if they were wearing wellingtons. We preferred not to kill one of the chickens for Christmas. That was to be for the New Year.

Sylvia was efficient in the dispatch to their maker of the geese. This East End girl had quickly adapted to country life. They didn't know, the geese, what had hit them. It was over and they would no longer wander beneath our apple trees nor swim on our stream. 

The two carcasses had to be plucked, an irritating procedure as particles from the feathers and down floated in the air and up our nostrils. Their wings, when viewed close to, were a marvel to behold and the down, on their chests, so soft. The feathers and down went on to the compost heaps.

Now that we had naked carcasses we had to clean them, that is, deal with their innards, an interesting procedure from an anatomical point of view. We kept the hearts and livers for gravy.

These procedures took place in our rickety conservatory which was in desperate need of conservation as was the rest of the cottage. Dusk fell and we needed to switch on the light, a 40 watt bulb. Once plucked and drawn, all that remained was to burn from the flesh (bumpy goose flesh) resistant down and quills with a lighted spill. I turned the first of the carcasses over. It honked, a familiar, angry sound. I screamed. Air, remaining in the carcass had been pushed through the windpipe in the neck and it made the same sound as when it had roamed under the apple trees. In the dim light, the sound was haunting and eerie. 

For the next days, the goose now being in the fridge and filling it, we made other preparations for Christmas. Holly and mistletoe grew on our one and a half acres, holly on the boundary, with sharp protective leaves and red berries, none of the tame stuff, and mistletoe on our apple trees. Mistletoe grows also on other rough-barked trees, like oaks and poplar.

Our home, Pantyfer, meaning ‘hollow of fir trees’, although by now there were none, had been a pair of cottages knocked into one, the homes of the blacksmith and the stone-mason. We had four, low ceilinged rooms, two up two down with exposed beams downstairs, supporting the upstairs floors.  The roof trusses were exposed upstairs, so we had only tiles above our heads up there – with spiders and dust, dust especially when the wind blew.

Father Christmas would not be paying a visit as the fireplace in the sitting-room smoked because the chimney, in relation to the size of the fireplace, was too small, and there was not sufficient draught. But by the time we had decorated the cottage with holly, the place looked a treat, no garish colours just holly and ivy and a bit of tinsel.

The wind howled that Christmas night. The fireplace smoked, the Rayburn roared joyfully, consuming Polish anthracite even though we lived close to a colliery mining the best anthracite in the world. This was the time of the miners’ strike. We were at the western edge of the valleys. The people suffered at that time. All the children, with few exceptions, in the Gwendraeth Valley Comprehensive School were on free meals.

Next to our land was a bluebell wood, in spring. In winter, the wind roared down the little valley of the Isfael and the river was in spate. Shallow-rooted trees often fell and the Gwendraeth River, further down where it received the rushing, gushing Isfael River, would flood. The cottages seemed to have survived for two hundred years nearly, so we worried about neither falling trees nor rising floods, only dust in our eyes.

Haggis slept, all through that windy night, by the roaring Rayburn in the kitchen, the warmest place in the cottage. The goose next morning was soon in the Rayburn's oven, a good hot fire having been stoked up.

The observant among you would be recognising in that four roomed cottage, two up, two down, no bathroom has been mentioned. There was none. A shower had been installed above the kitchen in one bedroom, but no toilet. We had an Elsan chemical toilet, outside, in a crumbling shed without a door. We had rigged up a shield for privacy and also place for a torch or candle when it was dark. We called it Tenko, after a TV programme at the time. No, we had no television either.  Reception in the valley was non-existent.

Buckets featured heavily in our lives. Buckets of earth had to be moved around the garden in preparation for spring vegetable planting, buckets of compost, to the heaps or from the heaps, buckets of wood for the open fire, buckets of anthracite for the Rayburn, buckets of ash from the fireplace and the Rayburn, and buckets from Tenko to the compost heap.  Our lives were lived promoting nature’s cycles.

At this time, some seven or eight months in our crumbling little grey home in West Wales, we had to fetch all our shopping, including corn and potatoes to fatten the geese, by shopping trolley and bus to Carmarthen and back, seven miles from the village, which was one mile uphill. There was a village store up at Llanddarog which later delivered many of our groceries. Milk, unpasteurised, was delivered by a bullying milk-lady, and anthracite was delivered by the half ton to our smithy, the also crumbling blacksmith’s shop on our land, where we stored gathered wood and fuel. Wood and anthracite, in buckets of course, we carried over a bridge and into the cottage. The only catastrophe that ever befell us was the freezing of the water pipe under the bridge, when winter did its worst. Being Wales, there was still plenty of water available. Neighbours were helpful. And winters were otherwise wonderful, what with sledging down the hill, snowball fights and snow people galore in the garden.

Our Christmas dinner that year consisted of our delicious goose, of course, locally grown vegetables carried from Carmarthen market along with the ingredients for our home-made Christmas cake, mincemeat for mince pies and Christmas pudding.  Drink was only cider, obtained on a trip by bus and train to Hereford, some eighty miles across the border to the county of apples and cider. Here we would visit my relatives.

For the Christmas meal we had our own apple sauce for the goose and cream – oh, so thick – from the milk-lady. In later years, everything came from our own garden except dried fruit and bread for the bread sauce.

Every year, we recall the Pantyfer Christmases. We were poor, we had little money, even on a trip to Carmarthen shopping, we could afford only one cup of tea between the two of us. But those times were challenging, creative. We learned a lot, about ourselves and each other and life. Only outside events caused us to leave our idyll.  Ever since, we have dreamed about doing it again. Now, we couldn't cope with the cold, the carrying, the chopping of wood, the dispatch of livestock. But we are happy and proud that we did it.