Teddy's Life. A Giant of a Man

The year was 1968, and about four months before Christmas I moved into my furnished bed sitting room.  My first time away from Mum and Dad.  Of course I still saw them once a week when I went for Sunday lunch and did my washing.  (I know what you are thinking.  No, I used the Launderette next to my watering hole, The Sudeley Arms, where I could be sure of bumping into friends while my smalls were tumbling and spinning)  Some of my friends had that effect on me when I was twenty-two!

Christmas approached, and I imagined the feast that Mum and Dad would put on for us.  Turkey and all the trimmings, Christmas Pudding, and Trifle for Christmas Tea.

Calamity!  A couple of days before Christmas, my parents phoned to tell me to stay away.  They had both got flu.  They would be staying in bed.  I was not to go anywhere near them.

So I went shopping.  A powdered curry reconstituted with water, a half bottle of German Riesling, and an individual fruit Christmas Pudding.

I should mention that my bedsit was in a very large 200 year-old house overlooking the Park.  My ex-Polish landlord Teddy, and his family, and his wife's family and children, and two other people of my age all lived under the same roof.

One other thing about Teddy.  He had a tattoo on his arm.  It was a number.  Once, when we were by ourselves in the house, he explained that he had been a slave worker in Auschwitz for six months at the end of the War.  He told me a lot more, too, but it wasn't the sort of thing I'd want to write about here.  He was a lovely man, the sort of person you feel better for knowing.

Just as I was serving up my Christmas mini feast, there was a knock on the door.  In came Teddy.

"What are you doing here?  Why aren't you at home with your parents?"

I told him what had happened

"Oh dear!  I'm afraid I need your chair" he said, as he took my only dining chair and disappeared down the stairs.

I was destined to have a Perpendicular Christmas Dinner.

The door opened again.

"Well, come on!" he said, "I need someone to sit in it!"

So I followed him downstairs into the very elegant dining room, and he directed me to my chair.  There were three in his family around the table, as well as another four in his brother-in-law's family, two or three cousins, two or three friends, and four people from off the street.  Including me, about seventeen or eighteen of us sat down to a full Christmas dinner featuring a large roast goose.

It was quite remarkable.  I was reminded of it a few weeks ago, when I had a signed print reframed.  He gave it to me when I left his house to go to University.  He did not want it, and it was a good luck present from him to me.  Whenever I see it I am reminded of a very kind man who lived a very different life to my way of life at the same age, and his wife Renee, who both gave me such wonderful memories of a very special and unusual day!