BARTLEBY

The other day I met a woman who had recently enjoyed her hundredth birthday. The person who pointed her out in the audience at a talk I was giving suggested that this wasn’t really a big deal these days. Aren’t we all aiming for three figures, they mused? Come on, I thought. That lady in the front row, just over there, sitting and waiting along with everyone else, is A HUNDRED!

As you can tell, I haven’t met many centenarians. None, in fact, before this one. I kept my eye on her as I gave my presentation, but she exhibited no sign of being any different to her neighbours. She listened attentively and came up at the end to say thank you for the lecture. Thank you for coming, I replied, and off she went.

Everything about this person was completely ordinary, I reflected as I drove home, except for that magic number. Being a cricket fan, perhaps I’m particularly excited by the prospect of reaching three figures, but there’s more to it than that. This lady – let’s call her Helen – experienced her first Christmas as a baby in 1922. The Great War and the terrifying influenza epidemic that followed were recent memories.

Helen grew up with George V on the throne. In her school geography book the continents of the world were coloured here and there in pink, showing the vast extent of the British Empire. That world, meanwhile, was getting smaller. When Helen was six, Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic. Some 10 years later the celebrated aviator flew most of the way around the world before disappearing off the Australian coast.

By the time World War Two was declared, Helen was almost eighteen and she no doubt played her part in the conflict. When I met her, she lived near Birmingham, so perhaps she worked in industry, or in healthcare. Or perhaps she was a Wren mechanic, fixing boat engines in stylish bell-bottom trousers. Whatever she did, she experienced the Blitz Christmases of 1940 and 1941, not to mention the years of rationing.

In those days people ate goose for Christmas dinner, goose having been the traditional feast day bird for centuries. Country people might buy a young goose and fatten it up themselves. My mother grew up in a Norfolk vicarage with a pet goose called Gertie, who had originally been purchased with eating in mind but was spared when the four girls in the family fell in love with her. She became an excellent guard-goose, once chasing my grandfather (who she didn’t know) out of the garden.

But at eighty-two, my mother is a babe in arms compared to Helen, who survived the war and – who knows? – perhaps settled down with a de-mobbed serviceman and raised her children through the post-war years. They would have enjoyed free healthcare, thanks to the newly established NHS, but for the kids this probably didn’t make up for the lack of sugar. Not-very-sweet Christmas pudding anyone?

Ah, but imagine the Christmas tree. When I was very young my grandparents decorated their tree with coloured lights mounted on an industrial scale cable, but in the box of decorations they still had clips for candles. The lights I’m sure were easier to deal with, and safer, but how magical it must have been to gaze at a tree lit by flickering candles.

I’m not sure when the late Queen started doing her Christmas address, but it’s curious to imagine how Helen felt listening for the first time to the new monarch, who was four years her junior. In a world where older men had almost all the power, it must have been extraordinary. And then year after year, decade after decade, the same voice and the same face, in black and white and then in colour. Until this year, of course. This year it will be the young King delivering the Christmas message... ■

MAGAZINE

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