66 years ago today, 16th October, the kids TV programme Blue Peter first aired on the BBC. I know this because on Monday we went along to see the marvellous Brian Bilston in Southampton and bought a book – Days Like These - An Alternative Guide to the Year in 366 Poems. Today’s poem is called The Badge. My equally, if not just a bit more marvellous hub reminded me about a story I wrote on the same topic…
You can listen to me reading it on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/jancarr/grateful-1969
Or read it yourself here...
Grown ups give you things and you have to be grateful. They knit you baggy jumpers and expect you to wear them. They give you books with tiny writing and expect you to read them or sweets that aren’t proper sweets at all, like sugared almonds or fruit jellies and expect you to eat them. ‘Grateful’ means lying through your teeth – ‘Dear Aunty Dorothy, Thank you for the lovely jumper. It fits perfectly.’ Dear Aunty Margaret, I really liked the Newberry fruits you sent and I am looking forward to reading Grimm’s Classic Fairy Tales retold for Boys and Girls. The clue’s in the title, Aunty.
‘Just be grateful you have presents at Christmas,’ Mum said. ‘There are lots of poor children in the world with no parents or kind aunties.’
Sometimes, I wished I was one of them.
Writing ‘Thank You’ letters can put you off writing anything for life. My mum said, ‘If you don’t write to say thank you, you won’t get a present next year.’
I tried to tell her I didn’t want those presents. I’d said and said and said how I wanted a Tressy with hair that really grew or a Spacehopper, before I got too big to bounce really high on one. How come she couldn’t hear that when she could hear me tip toe across the bedroom floor to turn the light back on when I was meant to be asleep?
Something Mum did get me every year though was a Blue Peter Annual because it was ‘educational’. I loved Val, John, and Pete smiling at me from the front cover wearing their Blue Peter Badges. And the tiny crack it made on Christmas morning when I opened it for the first time.
I did try making my own badge out of some cardboard from a cornflakes box. I coloured it in with blue felt tip. But it was rubbish because the card was brown and my colouring was all streaky anyway.
The annual was full of pictures in colour, not like on our old TV. Pictures of things that had been on the show that year, so it was like being able to watch them all over again. I especially loved the picture of John slipping on the elephant poo and the instructions for making a Dougal puppet off The Magic Rounadbout. This year’s had loads of stuff about the different things people collect.
Collectors have different names according to what’s in their collections. I learned that philatelists collect stamps, numismatists collect coins, and deltiologists collect postcards. Every collector has loads of things that must have taken them years to get. Val, John, and Pete said they’d like to hear about our collections. And if we wrote them an interesting letter, they’d send us a Blue Peter badge. Brilliant!
I was on my way downstairs to ask Mum for a sheet of her best writing paper, when I remembered I didn’t have much of anything you could call a collection. I had last year’s conkers but what could I tell Val, John, and Pete about them? I’ve got a big brown one, some little brown ones and some are a bit harder than others but I don’t know which until the softer ones are smashed to bits? I slipped back in between the bedcovers and let Aunty Dorothy’s bag of sugared almonds slide to the floor.
*****
Granma lived up the end of our road. We walked up to see her almost every day. Grandad had died, which meant he wasn’t under her feet anymore so she could do lots of tidying up. Mum, Granma, and me made lots of trips to the Oxfam shop.
Once, not long after Christmas, Granma walked down the road to visit us. I didn’t see her because I was at school and she only stayed long enough to make Mum get out her best cups and saucers to have a cup of tea.
‘Granma’s brought you a present,’ said Mum when I got home.
Mum said ‘brought’ and not ‘bought’. That was a bad sign. She pointed to a box on the table.
It was an old shoe box with some string tied round it.
Definitely a bad sign.
I would probably be safe betting my pocket money from now until I’m really old like twenty seven or something, that it wasn't a Tressy or a Spacehopper.
‘Go on then,’ said Mum. ‘Why don’t you open it?’
The box smelled funny. It smelled of Grandad’s Woodbines and the white stuff Granma used to rub into his aches and pains. I didn’t want to open it.
One of the corners was split, which was why it needed the string. I was worried it was some of Grandad’s old books noone’s heard of anymore. I closed my eyes and imagined Grandad was here again. Then I opened them straightaway and decided to get it over with.
‘You’ll have to write Granma a ‘Thank You’’, said Mum.
‘Wha’..? I slumped in the chair.
Mum’s mouth was a thin straight line, so hardly any of her lips showed at all.
‘Yes, Mum.’ I hooked my finger through the string that was holding the box together and slid it across the table towards me.
‘Be careful…’ Mum was still watching over me. She held her hands over her pinny like she was hoping for something.
The knot was tiny so I pulled the string off the box with it still tied up. It was tight so it took a while to work it off.
After a bit Granma’s present didn’t smell so much. That was until I got the lid off, when it didn’t smell of Grandad any more just very old.
Well, it was brilliant! Granma’s present was a present! Exactly what I needed! I couldn’t believe I’d got one! Maybe this way it didn’t strictly count but I didn’t care. ‘Can I take it upstairs?’
‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ said Mum.
I put the lid back on the shoe box and tucked it under my arm, and careful not to let anything slide out of the torn edge, I took it upstairs.
After tea, I was ready. ‘Can I have some paper please, Mum?’
I swear Mum clapped for joy. She put a pen and a perfect bit of thick white paper, so stiff it was almost card, on the table in front of me.
‘I need two bits…please.’
Her smile lost some of its curl as she returned from the cupboard again with another sheet of the card paper. I expect it must have looked a bit suspicious when the most I usually managed was one side and that was by making my writing really big and spaced out.
I leaned over the table, curled my left arm round the paper and started writing. While my head was down, I felt Mum place a matching envelope on the table near my guarding arm. I needed two, so when she was back in the kitchen with the washing up, I pinched another one out the cupboard.
I spent the sixpence I was saving for two ounces of lemon sherbet on a stamp instead. I posted one letter that wasn’t big and spaced out and when we went to Granma’s that Saturday, I gave her the other letter, which wasn’t big and spaced out either. When she read the letter I was sure she smiled.
For weeks and weeks after that I’d come home from school and ask Mum if there’d been any post. When she asked me what I was expecting, I’d pretend not to hear her. Until it got a bit awkward, so I stopped asking and just looked to see if there were any letters lying around with my name on. A while after that, I stopped bothering to look too.
At Easter, I had three eggs, one from Mum, one wrapped in turquoise and silver foil in a mug from Granma, and one I won in a raffle at Holy Trinity’s Spring Clean Jumble Sale. The Aunties didn’t approve of chocolate. Mum let me off writing a ‘thank you’ to Granma because we were going straight there for dinner.
Because Easter was late that year, the wait between then and my birthday wasn’t so long as usual. There was just enough time to cut out lots of pictures of Spacehoppers and Tressies from the old Kay’s catalogues in the wet playtime box at school and stick them on the bit of bedroom wall right in front of Mum’s nose if she came in to kiss me goodnight.
My birthday when it came was a near miss - a Cindy, with short hair, but still no Spacehopper. Though there was a small pile of post for me when I got home from school. Mum sat me down at the table with an ice cream sandwich, as a special treat before we went up to Granma’s for tea.
I opened my cards and stood each one in front of me in card wall of lucky black cats , bouncy bunnies and cute ponies.
The last envelope was bigger than the others. It was typed and in the corner was a little blue sailing ship.
I felt a lump inside the envelope and another lump wriggle up into my throat. My skin prickled like electricity. I shivered when I pushed my finger through the gap at the top and ripped the envelope open, careful not to let anything loose fall out.
First, with a shaking hand, I pulled out a typewritten letter...
Dear Janette,
Thank you for your letter and the old postcard you sent us of Chinese boats. We really enjoyed reading about your collection and have put the card on our viewers’ board. Your Grandad must have had a very interesting time visiting China when he was in the army. We think you certainly are a budding deltiologist! We hope you enjoy wearing your badge as much as building your collection!
Best wishes,
Val, John, and Pete.
For about three seconds I didn’t want to look in the envelope in case they’d forgotten to put one in. But I couldn’t think of anything else the lump could be, so I took a better than a Spacehopper by a hundred miles present out and pinned it on my frock. I put my thank you letter from Val, John, and Pete back in its envelope, took Mum’s hand and let her lead me, a real Blue Peter Badge winner, up the road to Granma’s for my birthday tea.
I really wanted to wear the letter as well, to show everyone that I’d done something good and people liked it. Not just people, Val, John, and Pete people. Now I knew what it was like to get one, I thought differently about thank you letters after that. For a few years at least.
Thanks so much for reading!
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