Lockdown – in the cold

How many of us currently “in lockdown” remember the extraordinary winter of 1962/3? It had snowed in November – my father coined the phrase “Snow in November, a January to remember!”.  And boy, was he right.  It got colder and colder, and at the end of December there were blizzards in Wales and the SouthWest, arriving in the rest of the country in January. It was indeed a month and more to remember.  For a ten-year old, it was VERY exciting, really romantic. We were snowed in!

Frozen garden

So much happened then.  Thank goodness, we had central heating, then a new thing! When we moved to the country 18 months before (quarter of a mile up a farm track, a helluva walk for small legs down to the school bus), the house barely had running water; it wasn’t on main drains, so that much had to be  done to it before we moved in, including, thank goodness, oil-fired central heating.  It was only turned on during the day, though it might come on in extremis with a low set thermostatic control.  Many days we’d wake up to find ice on the inside of the windows. It was hard to open the door, but lovely to crunch outside in boots on crusted virgin snow.

We had a big larder and my mother had proved an ace at bottling fruit and veg, so we had Kilner jars full of them.  We had free-range chickens, quite a lot of them, so had eggs and meat; the only problem was keeping their water from freezing.  I remember struggling to their field with kettles of hot water to ensure the poor things had something to drink.

After a few days, the local village storekeeper crossed the fields on a tractor, bringing us bread and milk.  My mother begged his packet of cigarettes off him; that was one of the spurs to her to give up, she was so ashamed of the craving!

My sister’s beautiful sleek black cat, known as Miserable Starkey, disappeared; a few days later, she decided to come in from one of the barns (where we assumed she’d been holed up).  She was calling us, miaowing pitifully, and we saw her jumping up several feet and disappearing again, as she negotiated 3 feet deep soft snow to get back to the house.  Once indoors, she barely stirred from the fat (and warm) central heating pipe by the boiler.

Our cocker spaniel, Tina, walking with my father when paths had been beaten down through the snow, eventually could walk no more; why? He carried her home, to find that snow had balled under her “arms” and she was stuck!

The farmer’s pond froze; we dared to scrape snow off a circle of about 13feet in diameter and some old leather boots and skates were found from lofts, and we had a go. Toboggans proved incredibly useful as well as fun.

Did we get to school? Well, yes, after a few weeks.  In fact, at first, I stayed with my best friend’s family in the town near school (we’d moved away quite a distance, but I was coming up to the 11+ so it was felt important I should stay put in that school for that year). I was there a week.  The journalist husband was in Australia, covering the England cricket tour, definitely in clover! We were suffering with blocked pipes (particularly, I remember, the LOO!) and finally, no hot water, which sent me back home.  So my mother made a big effort to drive me the 17 miles across the country.  I remember one lane might be open and sometimes drivers (the selfish ones) would try to push through and one of us would end up with the bonnet deep in snow.  In some places the army controlled the traffic (this is in the country!) and we’d drive with snow ten feet high on either side.

The football season was cancelled and a pools panel met every week so people could continue to bet; many seasonal businesses and farmers suffered hugely – it was one of the factors that finally put paid to any commercial traffic on the canals.  We had bits of snow right up to April, but much of it was gone during March, and life returned to a frozen country.

We had the occasional power cut – we all had torches and candles – food was a bit dull, we were living miles from our friends, but I don’t remember really hating it – it was cold, your fingers and toes froze, we didn’t have the kind of great kit that people have now for winter conditions, but as a child, it did not seem perilous, just exciting.

So let’s hope that kids in this period of lockdown will look back on it as an extraordinary time, exceptional, exciting – and won’t remember it with horror.  We must make sure life returns but NOT necessarily to the norms we’ve been so used to in the last few years, but valuing lives and life and those who make it meaningful, in a new and more appreciative way.