So another day and yet another with no idea what I'm doing. So let's talk about the weather shall we? Why not? Everyone else seems to be. It's wall to wall weather on the TV and radio - and outside in the arctic wind...
Observation one:
It’s bloody cold. The last time I remember cold like this I was about six and living in a house without central heating and only an open fire in the living room to keep warm by. I know that sounds like an old man story, but it’s true and I really did have ice on the inside of my bedroom window. I used to love looking at that ice, the way it made climbing patterns of crystal on the glass; a frozen winter jewel on a pane of non-double glazed glass. We didn’t even have duvets back then, just grey woollen army blankets piled upon the bed. But I don’t remember ever being really cold. I must have been I guess, but I don’t remember shivering - mind you I did have a blue rubber hot water bottle wrapped in a towel to rest my feet upon. It was great until it leaked and then icicles on the toesicles.
Observation one:
It’s bloody cold. The last time I remember cold like this I was about six and living in a house without central heating and only an open fire in the living room to keep warm by. I know that sounds like an old man story, but it’s true and I really did have ice on the inside of my bedroom window. I used to love looking at that ice, the way it made climbing patterns of crystal on the glass; a frozen winter jewel on a pane of non-double glazed glass. We didn’t even have duvets back then, just grey woollen army blankets piled upon the bed. But I don’t remember ever being really cold. I must have been I guess, but I don’t remember shivering - mind you I did have a blue rubber hot water bottle wrapped in a towel to rest my feet upon. It was great until it leaked and then icicles on the toesicles.
Observation
two:
I don’t ever remember my school closing even when the snow was deep, crisp, even, and three bloody feet of frozen coldness. I'd tramp to school past six feet drifts of snow and think: I can't wait for my seven times table test this morning in my freezing cold classroom and then (after sitting in the dunce's corner all day) I can tramp my way home to a freezing cold house and a plate of Heinz beans on soft burnt toast. Pure heaven. These days a couple of inches of snow and the world comes to a standstill. People stay home from work, nobody goes out, and the media tell us what the worst case scenario is going to be even when it doesn’t really happen. I remember push starting my father's old car because the battery had died. What a great dad, using his six year old son as a pusher at six in the morning. Thank god all the other boys helped: they were up too pushing their dad's car with some still in pyjamas and jaunty bobble hats. We’d always get the car going and then my father would drive off to work in his unheated automobile to Morris’s Cowley works to drink tea and plan strike action in the snow, slipping and sliding as he went because I don’t remember the roads ever being gritted.
I don’t ever remember my school closing even when the snow was deep, crisp, even, and three bloody feet of frozen coldness. I'd tramp to school past six feet drifts of snow and think: I can't wait for my seven times table test this morning in my freezing cold classroom and then (after sitting in the dunce's corner all day) I can tramp my way home to a freezing cold house and a plate of Heinz beans on soft burnt toast. Pure heaven. These days a couple of inches of snow and the world comes to a standstill. People stay home from work, nobody goes out, and the media tell us what the worst case scenario is going to be even when it doesn’t really happen. I remember push starting my father's old car because the battery had died. What a great dad, using his six year old son as a pusher at six in the morning. Thank god all the other boys helped: they were up too pushing their dad's car with some still in pyjamas and jaunty bobble hats. We’d always get the car going and then my father would drive off to work in his unheated automobile to Morris’s Cowley works to drink tea and plan strike action in the snow, slipping and sliding as he went because I don’t remember the roads ever being gritted.
Observation
three:
Where have all the huge icicles gone? There were always icicles in winter hanging from the gutters, even the trees sometimes. Often they were four feet long. In fact, there seemed to be much more ice to go around back then despite there never being any ice cubes in the fridge. Ponds and canals froze so deep that you could walk on them, the milk froze in the bottles and pushed off their foil bottle caps (silver, red, gold, and green - although I have no idea what the green was - milk from Martian cows maybe?), washing froze solid on wooden pegged washing lines and there were always boys making fifty foot ice slides on the pavements to play on and break old lady's hips. What a health and safety nightmare world that would be for the health and safety police today.
Observation four:
The water used to freeze over in the inside toilet (I think I'll leave one that there though - somebody did!).
Where have all the huge icicles gone? There were always icicles in winter hanging from the gutters, even the trees sometimes. Often they were four feet long. In fact, there seemed to be much more ice to go around back then despite there never being any ice cubes in the fridge. Ponds and canals froze so deep that you could walk on them, the milk froze in the bottles and pushed off their foil bottle caps (silver, red, gold, and green - although I have no idea what the green was - milk from Martian cows maybe?), washing froze solid on wooden pegged washing lines and there were always boys making fifty foot ice slides on the pavements to play on and break old lady's hips. What a health and safety nightmare world that would be for the health and safety police today.
Observation four:
The water used to freeze over in the inside toilet (I think I'll leave one that there though - somebody did!).
I could go
on and on, but unless you were there you might not believe it and sometimes I’m
not sure that it wasn’t a dream. I certainly don’t remember the winters getting
warmer but they must have done because back in the sixties balaclavas, woollen
gloves, and thick scarves seemed to be de rigour – as were cold sores on your
chapped bleeding lips, blue toes, and chilblains. I’m not saying that it was ever as cold as the good old days
of the Ice Fair when the Thames froze over and they lit fires on the ice to
roast chestnuts, but there was definitely more ice in my childhood (just not in the fridge as I've said).
I’m not
complaining, I'm sure that it wasn't so very different back then and these days I do so feel the cold. But I sometimes wonder what all the
fuss is really about. It's just weather. An inch of snow, a few hard frosts and the world stands
still whilst the supermarket shelves empty. Of course a few people die from the cold and other people get stuck in cars overnight, holidays are ruined, pipes freeze, and animals hyperthermate (made up word: Please note Oxford English Dictionary types) in the fields, but it's just weather. We can deal with it - Dunkirk spirit and all that; onwards and upwards after all. No, we just don't deal with it very well after being so spoilt by the Gulf Stream lapping warmly at our shores and let's not forget we are as far north as Canada, so by rights we should shivering, blue, and wrapped in about ten layers of fake fur for at least four months of the year.
Even with the biting cold and winds (was that a cow that just flew past the window?) it seems that people have
forgotten how to wrap up warm. I popped down to Sainsbury’s yesterday and there
were women in skirts and tops without coats, no scarves, not even gloves, and there
wasn’t a balaclava in sight. Pity, there’s something strangely attractive about
a woman in a balaclava especially if they are wandering along the chiller aisle
wearing crampons.
Or is that
just me?
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