Saturday 30th January

We often had snow, and even a dusting one Christmas morning but the winter of 1963 was something else.  I was 12 and in my first year at Grammar School and still in short trousers, though as I was so small they came down past my knees, not that that kept my poor legs warm at all.  The snow began early in January.  We were actually visiting Auntie Pam’s house for Sunday tea and the snow came down and down and down.  When it came time to leave we dug out Dad’s Morris Minor but it wouldn’t start at all.  Mum and Dad walked the two or three miles back to our own house and my sister and I stayed at Auntie Pam’s, top and tailing in one large double bed with my three younger girl cousins.  At the time it was really exciting and we were stranded there for a couple of days.

But this winter went on and on, well into March in fact.  There was at least a foot of snow on the ground and far deeper than that when it drifted.  But we went to school every day, chapped legs, sodden shoes and socks and all.  It was so cold that there was a sheet of ice formed from the condensation of my own breath on the inside of my bedroom window each morning.  But our school wasn’t going to let a little bit of snow stop the curriculum – there was no closing of schools for health and safety in those days.  We had to play rugby and football on a snow-covered pitch, even in a blizzard one day when you couldn’t even see more than a few feet in front of you.  We would come in frozen and wet through and through and strip off and run quickly for the communal showers just to get warm.  There was a huge ice slide in the playground and we would take it in turns to run up and launch ourselves onto it, falling over more often than not and finishing on our bottoms.  But no teachers ever thought of stopping us or putting salt down, in fact a couple of the younger ones even had a go themselves and stood around applauding us.

After a few weeks though, the novelty wore off and we were all hoping for a thaw, which was slow coming with fresh falls of snow covering the black slushy ruts along the roads.  I can’t ever remember the roads being cleared or councils gritting the roads, the few cars just slid around on the icy compacted snow.

I have never known a winter like 1963, and definitely don’t want to again; once was enough.