Memories of Jack Frost

Having eight inches of snow blanketed across the district has been a joy! It has catapulted me back to the early seventies and eighties when we had proper winters. As with everything from your childhood, the rose tinted glow encapsulates and warms my heart.

Thrown out of the house come rain or shine, we’d walk to school as normal and crack frozen puddles with our heels and watch the splintered pattern emerge. The snow was quite often knee deep and we’d follow the tracks and occasionally push each other into the snow wall to get a frosty dusting.

School was always open in the snow, however we were confined to the classroom at breaks, reading old Beano’s and playing board games. You’d turn up to school in your wellies, duffle coat and mittens on string and have to change into slippers or pumps to avoid getting the parquet floor sodden. We were allowed outside at dinner, the boys would spend their time making cresta run slides down the playground and perform sliding pirouettes to impress the girls or stockpiling snowballs for home time. We would be making snowmen and snow angels with our chapped legs and sore lips. One of the posh girls would have strawberry lip-salve and we would all share and spread our germs!

Home time would see a hail of snowballs from the boys and we would run about scooping great handfuls of snow from the car roofs and tops of walls and attempting to at least get one snowball on target. Our hands would be frozen and we’d get chilblains on our toes. It was expected, it was winter.

Snow meant sledging and sledging meant disappearing for hours on end. Word would spread between us about which hill was the best to sledge down. Granddad had made us a wooden sledge and we would candle wax the runners, however it just sank into the snow with its design faults. We’d use old feedbags instead. At some point my sister was bought a bright red plastic sledge. It was the height of sledging fashion. Three of use could sit comfortably on it; we’d giggle as we’d glide down the hill heading for the bump. If you landed correctly it was great cause for celebration otherwise we’d end up in a heap of wellies, snow and sledge much to the amusement of the other hardened sledgers. We'd come home soaking wet with red rosy cheeks and mum would make us a hot steaming cuppa and Bovril on toast. We’d be wrapped in itchy wool blankets and huddle around the coal fire keeping warm until bedtime.

The big melt. Snow was only pristine and white for a day or so. It soon had the black crust from dusty coal fires and at this point you’d no longer let the snow melt on your tongue as a free seasonal treat. During the melt and freeze period, huge icicles would hang off the guttering and everything looked like it had been touched by Jack Frost. Our bedroom window would be frozen on the inside as well as the outside and we’d blow warm air on the surface and make little spies holes, you could see your breath in the air and we would pretend to be cosmopolitan and smoke. By mid afternoon the windows would drip in condensation and towels would be on every windowsill mopping up the excess water.

We were never hungry, Dad still went to work, Mum would be baking in the kitchen and struggling to get wet washing dry but life went on. All the grown ups would be shovelling snow and it was seen as pride to keep your pavement clear. I don’t really remember gritters and snowploughs every coming down our street, if you owned a car, there was always somebody to push you out of the street. We walked everywhere and shopped when the cupboard was bare.

The perception of global warming has made us soft. The health and safety and sue society has driven us to down tools and whimper at every snowflake. Not me, I’m loving it and despite wearing gloves at work and warming my toes on a dodgy fan heater I found in the store cupboard, I’m reliving my childhood and will be disappointed by the big melt.