Our Christmases were lovely - because we had - all the dining room was all
decorated out with beautiful, coloured like Chinese lanterns but they
weren't
lit until the lunch on Christmas day - they were put up about a week before
but
they were actually lit on Christmas day. And the tables were all laid out
with
white clothes and with crackers and fruit and a little bag of sweets at each
place, it really looked very, very nice. It was the one day in the year when
the
staff waited on us. And after lunch we would all go back to the playrooms
and a
big hamper would be brought in. Because when the foster mothers arrived on
their
last visit before Christmas they would bring presents for their children and
they were kept to one side until Christmas day... and it didn't occur to us
at
the time, until afterwards, but they brought the hamper in and every child
had a
present and we realised afterwards that those foster mothers, like my foster
mother, who hadn't been able to come - they had made a note of the children
whose foster mothers hadn't come and they supplied a present for them and so
we
all had a present and nobody knew whether it was from your mother or whether
it
was from the school. But as I say, it was one of those things, at the time,
we
didn't, you know, really think about it.