Do you still remember what you received for Christmas in 1965? I do! A pair of what were then quite popular elastic clip-on braces which, in my particular case, had been ingeniously strapped length-wise over a wooden ruler. I did use the ruler for a while but never once wore the braces.
The reason I remember it so well is because I had arrived only some four months earlier and this was my first Christmas in Australia. Even while still in Germany I had already spent half-a-dozen Christmases away from my parents' dysfunctional homes - plural, because they divorced when I was six and I had alternated between them until I left altogether when only 14 - and for me there was nothing sentimental about Christmas, but perhaps my new boss at the bank must've thought so because he instructed one of the married employees to invite me for Christmas dinner at their home.
This particular chap was a rather rotund invidual who cycled to work and sometimes forgot to take off his bicycle clips and always wore a pair of those shirt sleeve garters and, yes, a pair of elastic clip-on braces. Even to me, who took in everything new unreservedly, he seemed to be a figure of fun and the least inspiring person I'd met in those first few months, and I would have politely declined his invitation had my English been up to it.
I don't remember much else except that they were a childless couple, she as skinny as he was fat, and that their house was full with his in-laws, his wife's parents and sisters and brothers, who had come down from Roma in Queensland. Much of what went on passed me by, partly because of my natural shyness and partly because of my lack of English, until I received that pair of elastic clip-on braces, never worn but always remembered.
