255. Chintz.

New Year! A time for nostalgia!

The picture couldn't be more appropriate to this poem. The scene portrays the idealised 'Englishness' of my childhood, no doubt seen through rose-tinted glasses. I have often wondered how our parents, with the threat of War hanging over them, managed to create an atmosphere of calm and certainty! Nowadays, with young children learning so much about War and Depression and Crime from the TV it must be much harder to shelter them from reality, which is what my parents did.

CHINTZ.

A New Year dawns and I recall

Other New Years when I was small,

When 'Christmas trees were still so tall'

And way above me.

When, in the Northern Hemisphere

I woke up to another year,

Surrounded by those I held dear,

And knew would love me.

The world seemed oh, so safe and calm,

So quite removed from all alarm,

So free of anything like harm,

So bright and breezy.

Such chintzy cheer, such fire-bright flames,

Such relatives with well-known names,

Such laughter and such merry games.

Life seemed so easy.

Yet, for the adults at that time,

Life often seemed far from sublime,

The threat of Universal Crime

And Conflagration

Approached from somewhere very near,

And it drew nearer every year,

At any time it would appear

With devastation.


How did my parents laugh and smile,

With Hitler hovering all the while?

Yet breast-beating was not their style;

They showed no sorrow.

That's why, at certain times like these,

When worries tend to taunt and tease

I like to mutter 'Stand at ease!'

To face tomorrow.

Here, in a country far away,

I wake up on this holiday

Hoping, that I, like them, can stay

Relaxed, unflurried,

So that my grandsons may recall

When they are older, strong and tall,

That childhood was good fun, that's all,

And stay unworried.