My brother and I grew up on a self-sufficient farm in Cornwall in the 1970s. Behind our cottage, the yard was busy with pigs, which came in from the fields in the evening to sleep in the pigsty. Ducks sailed the duckpond, geese ruled the homefield and we hand-milked our cows in the byre. We loved our animals. Sick hens or piglets were brought in to convalesce next to the Aga in our kitchen, scattered corn sometimes germinating between the flagstones.
Each Christmas, our tree stood in a bucket wrapped in red crepe paper, a pool of straw lying around its base, with our presents on top. We would decorate the tree with the glass baubles and 1930s celluloid toys that our grandmother bought during her boho life in pre‑war Berlin. So pretty. As darkness fell on Christmas Day, we would light real candles on the tree and bask in the magic.
When I was 11, our Bermudian cousin came to stay. Craig adored coming to his cousins’ mad little farm in Cornwall. He and our dad could get pretty rowdy; everyone in our family likes a drink and a lot of homebrew was drunk.
Our beloved sow, Porcina, had given birth to piglets just three months earlier. One of them was brought in by my dad and handed to Craig, a gift tag attached with a ribbon around its neck. My parents figured that a piglet would be just the thing to honour his visit. Craig named him Chauvy, which was short for Male Chauvinist Piglet.
Chauvy had a laugh being chased around the kitchen, with everyone going a bit Christmas mad-dog and having a lovely time. Eventually, he fell asleep on some presents on the straw. Darkness fell and we forgot about him. It was time to light the candles. Yay!
I was excited about one particular present propped up by the tree, dressed up in crepe paper as Father Christmas, which I hoped was a longed-for hockey stick.
It’s risky lighting candles on a dried-out Christmas tree surrounded by straw in a small draughty cottage. But this didn’t deter my family. We have never been put off creating something magical just because it’s risky. The candles were lit and the tree looked amazing.
Then – with perfect comic timing – Chauvy stood up, pushing one of the branches with a candle on it into a dangling nylon ribbon … which promptly caught fire. The candle fell on to the straw, some of which went up in flames. Chauvy eyed this with some alarm and bolted.
Amazingly, for an often irresponsible family, my parents had put a jug of water within reach of the tree, just in case. The fire was easily extinguished, but everyone was so busy finding Chauvy that no one noticed that my hockey stick, with its crepe-paper red suit and nylon-wool beard, had fallen against a candle at the back of the tree and was also now suddenly, and seriously, on fire. As the nearest to the kitchen, I rushed to the sink, got the washing-up bowl and, with all the accuracy of an 11-year-old girl in a panic, threw dirty dishwater (and the bowl) violently at the back of the tree. It didn’t put the fire out, but it did push the tree over, breaking those precious Berlin baubles, melting celluloid decorations and half‑drenching the presents that weren’t already smouldering. My father and Craig doubled over with laughter. I cried.
My brother ran to the workshop and got the fire extinguisher; Chauvy was carried back to the safety of the pigsty; and, after the fire was out, my mother swept everything up and put any soggy presents in the bottom oven to dry off. With the tree re-erected and the house safely not on fire, I snuck in my first taste of alcohol – disgusting – and opened my slightly singed (and thus unreturnable) hockey stick.
It was the wrong one.
