It was a bad winter that year. Rationing had ended in Britain only a few years before, but food was still scarce. Coal was in short supply and the snow was piled high in the streets, driven by Arctic blizzards. Stoically, folk went about their business as they always did, clearing the pavement in front of their houses, wrapping up well in overcoats, hats and scarves, galoshes on their feet, and queuing companionably for the corporation buses; few people owned cars or even telephones. Schools, shipyards and offices did not close because of bad weather and none could afford to miss a day’s work. Children, of course, loved it: the snow, the blizzards, the sheer joy of Christmas at home with their mummies and daddies and their presents. All children, that is, except one little boy, who did not have a daddy that Christmas. His daddy was at sea, braving the storms and blizzards, the cold and the wet, to bring a cargo home to England. The little boy worried about his daddy a lot when he was away, about him being shipwrecked and not coming home. His hymn book at school had a picture in it of a ship being overwhelmed by big waves and it always made him cry when they sang “Eternal Father strong to save” in school assembly. He also hoped his daddy would be warm enough now that his white seaboot stockings were hanging on the mantelpiece at home, waiting for Santa to fill them. Perhaps Daddy would be home on Christmas Day; Mummy said he might be – it depended on whether or not his ship had taken shelter. The little boy didn’t really understand that: how could a big ship like Daddy’s fit into a shed? Christmas Day dawned, and still no daddy. The little boy played with his Christmas present – a little car – but it just wasn’t the same. After breakfast he thought he would go down to the harbour and stand watch for Daddy’s ship. Wrapped up well in his little overcoat and scarf, a fur cap on his head and Wellington boots on his feet (Mummy was most insistent), he made his way across town to the Pilots’ Watchtower, high on the hill overlooking the harbour, dragging his sledge behind him. Daddy had made that sledge from some old boxes washed up on the shore and it was very special to him. Alas, there were no ships in the offing. The air was sharp and clear, the sky blue and the beach covered in thick snow, but the wind was bitter and the breakers crashed on the shore, driven by a sullen black swell. That water looked cold. He occupied himself by making a snowman, lost in his own little world and no longer thinking of storms and shipwrecks and pirates or not seeing his daddy again. Then, suddenly, as if gifted by second sight, he looked up. There, crossing the harbour bar a mile away, between the two piers, was a ship, salt-stained and rust-streaked, rolling in the swell, but undamaged by the storms. It was his daddy’s ship! He was sure of it. As the ship drew closer into the river, the boy could see him on the fo’c’sle head in his old duffel coat, his officer’s cap at the familiar jaunty angle. The little boy’s heart leapt. Abandoning his snowman he rushed home as fast as he could through the snow to tell Mummy, then he ran down to the town hall bus stop where he knew his father would appear, for the buses still ran on Christmas Day.
Then the moment came. A trolley bus drew up and there was his daddy on the platform, no doubt all bristly and smelling of ships, like he always was, clutching his battered old grip. The little boy thought that his heart would burst. With tears in his eyes, he ran to his father, threw his arms around his legs and cried out,
“My Daddy, my Daddy.”
His daddy was home and safe.
Together, hand in hand, they trudged home in the snow to their Christmas dinner with Mummy by the fire.
And do you know, for as long as he lived that little boy never forgot that day: the day that his daddy came home from sea on Christmas Day in the snow. It was the best Christmas ever. Presents are all very well, but it is family and friends and love that make this time of year really special.
Happy Christmas to all my readers and friends, wherever you may be. As Tiny Tim said, God bless us, every one.
24 December 2022
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 