Whit Monday: Dress Up, Shake Down

I know now that Whitsun is a Christian festival marking Pentecost. In the 1960s, though, it meant something far more immediate to us: the annual ritual of being dressed up in our Sunday best and paraded round the relatives like tiny overdressed beggars. We'd trot round the aunties and nans, collect a handful of coins for looking "nice", and then watch the loot vanish into Mam's handbag "for…