Visiting
Visiting was an important part of our Christmas. This had to be arranged in advance, since we had no telephone. Special visitors would be entertained in the Front Room. When we were small this was out of bounds to us boys. It was the "best" room and it had an old upright piano as well as a number of comfortable chairs. As I recall there were two types of visitors.
Daytime visitors were mostly women from the chapel and my brother and I were required to dress in our best clothes and sit still and quite in the Front Room while the guests were there and only speak if addressed directly. Our reward was that we could share the Welsh cakes that my mother had baked for the visit.
Evening visitors were quite different. Men and women would arrive. My mother would have made cawl (a clear stew of lamb and vegetables - but without leeks since my mother, unaccountably, didn't like them). We boys sat in the Front Room whilst steaming bowls of this were devoured along with doorsteps of bread. Soon we were whisked away to an early bed, but not before taking a peek at bottles coming out from the cupboard under the stairs - IPA and Guinness for the men, and sherry for the women. A little later sounds of piano-playing and singing began to drift upstairs.
For our own visiting the best was when my brother and I were allowed to visit "Auntie" and "Uncle" Rees on our own. Our house was at the bottom of a hill on the edge of some allotments and the Rees' house could be seen, some 400 yards away, on the top of the hill on the other side of the allotments. Each house could signal the other by putting a brightly coloured blanket out of the back bedroom window - to show we were leaving our house, and then had safely arrived at the other. Auntie (Dot) Rees and Uncle (DIP) Rees, much older than my parents, were an oddly matched pair. She was a wonderfully hospitable, happy woman who was stalwart of the Welsh Congregational Chapel in Bristol; he was a small genial man with a twinkle in his eye - an atheist, communist, technical college lecturer and stalwart of the Bristol trade union movement. We loved them dearly. Unlike visits to our house, going to the Rees' was a very informal affair. We sat around the coal fire in the kitchen (as in our house food preparation and cooking, washing up, clothes washing and similar tasks did not take place in the kitchen; all this was done in the attached scullery) eating Auntie Rees' Welsh cakes and sponges (she was a rather better cook than my mother) and later, when I was a teenager, discussing politics with Uncle Rees (which my mother always advised me not to do since he might lead me astray into left-wingism). Then the blanket would be taken in, signalling to our home that we were just leaving, and we tore back down the allotments.
