When I were nobbut a lad in Essex me, me mam and me da would go and visit my dad’s brother and his wife, Uncle Dick and Aunt Sally. The visits we made were infrequent and boring to me, as a child, and to my parents as adults too.

Aunt Sally and Uncle Dick were a straight laced couple who, it seemed, had drained every ounce of jollity from their house. Aunt Sally was a strict Methodist and she boasted that Uncle Dick never touched alcohol either because he had promised her on their wedding day that he would become  tee total . The words he had actually used were ‘I promise that you will never see me drink spirits or beer. And she never did.  Hhe made sure of that…  Aunt Sally noted that Uncle Dick’s only indulgence was that of eating and chewing mints which he did all day and every day especially when he was out on one of his nature rambles in Epping Forest of a Sunday lunchtime.

On the rare occasions when we would visit them on a Sunday afternoon when they weren’t at a chapel meeting mum,dad, Uncle Dick and Aunt Sally would sit in the parlour and talk about the decline in morals of today’s generation. Well, Aunt Sally would do the talking while the others did the listening, or a good impression thereof and I would be on the floor playing with the toy Noah’s Ark that was the only plaything permitted on the Sabaath. In one game I played the animals would go in 2 by 2 led by the lions and tigers who would ambush the others, kill and eat them as they got on  the ship and away from the prying eyes of Noah (and Aunt Sally). The other game I played was when the lions and tigers were the last to get on the ship and would have a big fight as to who was the strongest and would end up eating each other.  

I once asked Aunt Sally, out of devilment, if there were Unicorns on the Ark and she told me that as Noah was loading the Ark the Unicorns played and dozed in the fields and so missed getting on the Ark. They chased after the ship but could not get on; when you see white water spraying out behind a ship that, my aunt said, were the manes of the Unicorns perpetually chasing the Ark.

The only time Uncle Dick and Aunt Sally were any different was at Christmas. Aunt Sally would allow herself a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream  ‘in keeping with the season’ but only after watching the Queen’s Speech on TV. If she drank it earlier in the day she was afraid that it would be direspectful to  Her Majesty to watch her broadcast whilst ‘under the influence’ of spiritous liquours.

Meanwhile Uncle Dick would be in the dining room with us kids playing with our toys, laughing with us and telling us all the jokes he knew that were too good to go in the crackers…they weren’t, they were awful, but we laughed at them anyway because we were all  happy and loved him and he was our best CHRISTMAS CARD.