Snow on the way are you ready for it

Slinky

suki1964 wrote: »

I'm a result of that winter, born August 64

Just my luck, the snow is due Wednesday and I start a new job Friday lol

Your mother was pregnant for an extraordinary long time then!


Good luck with the new job

meanmarie

I remember 62/63.......my bus left me about a mile from college, I walked there in my high heeled suede boots.........very slowly but I wouldnt have been seen dead in flat heeled footwear.......or a skirt that came to within 6 ins of my knees! In those far off days trousers were not allowed for female students in UCD........I am old, old old!

Marie

GreyQueen

I dread a re-run of December 2010 as snow and ice in even modest amounts cause traffic chaos in my rather hilly city. It's one thing to drive up a snow-bound or icy hill if you can go at it steadily out in the country, but much harder to maintain traction in stop-start urban traffic. I have personally seen vehicles moving sideways on a diagonal uphill. Good-natured strangers have been known to spontaneously band together and give struggling vans and cars a hearty shove to get them moving in the right direction, though.

I don't have to go anywhere more than a 10 minute stroll from home to go to my workplace and have plenty of food on hand, so shouldn't suffer personally but I'm one of the lucky ones.

The further south you go (like me) the less frequently you're likely to encounter severe snow, and the less competant you're liable to be at everything from walking on icy pavements to driving on snowy roads.

A pal working for the ambulance trust tells me that day 3 of any icy spell is when they start picking up injured pensioners. Typical patterns see people venturing out at that point to replenish stocks of milk and bread. Therefore, it would be a kindness to think of elderly neighbours or friends and make sure that they have anything they might need; I've a standing arrangement with two pals in their seventies in this block to fetch such things as needed.

kittie, when a pal in Aberdeenshire had to switch his beloved but very decrepit Landie for a small van, he'd chuck some sandbags into it for snowy weather, to give it extra stability. Another pal who drives a Merc saloon with a very heavy engine does the same thing for the same reason.

[Deleted User]

Monnagran I too remember the 1947 winter ,boy was that a cold one .I seemed to permanently have my Dad's army great coat across the bottom of my bed and hot water bottles were first filled for me being the youngest, and once I was in bed and warm enough they would be handed over to my two brothers to share in their double bed.They were more precious than gold

I can remember my Mum putting a wrapped up brick that she had been getting warm in the tiny oven by the kitchen range in to my bed It was wrapped in an old piece of flannel but once warm seemed to keep its heat for ages.

We went up to visit family for the New Year in Scotland from London,and got snowed in there until the third week of January .My Mum bless her was fretting that the milkman had perhaps started leaving milk for us and in those days there were few phones around to ring the depot and cancel.My Dad said 'Don't be daft the milkmans horse and cart won't even get up the hill to our house :):) let alone will he leave umpteen bottles of milk' .

At our relations house there were six kids all top-to tail in one double bed and I can remember clearly that I was the smallest at almost 5, and was the one who had to jump out of bed and do the fastest run across the freezing lino and back to switch off the light. when I went to stay with my Aunt Cissy in Glasgow I was lucky enough to sleep in the hole-in-the wall bed in the kitchen which was right near to her stove and it was like a bunk bed built into the wall and had little curtains to close out the light, I thought it was a brilliant idea

In the winter of 1962-3 I got married and we had to wait for over an hour for the registrar to get in from one of the outlying villages in Oxfordshire I wore a very short dress and coat to match that barely covered my keks and high heals that meant I was sliding about all over the place .

When we came out after the ceremony my late OH ended up picking me up and carrying me to the restaurant where we had our meal We had to grab two folk off the street as our witnesses had't turned up either because of the snow, and we grabbed to hungry student from one of the local Uni's (luckily Oxford is full of them ) We ended up in a small place where steak and chips for all four of us cost £9.00, more than the marriage licence in those days :):)The students were quite happy to have a free meal and we were happy to have them as our witnesses.Never clapped eyes upon them since

My brother turned up with his wife eventually and said Don't worry I take some photos of you both (he had borrowed a camera from his pa-in-law who worked as a press photographer)
So we stood in the freezing cold and snow having these photo's done. Couple of days later my brother called me and said ,'Sorry the photo's won't come out' and when I asked why he said he had forgot to load the camera with film !!! so I sadly have no wedding photo's at all. but none the more for that I had almost 40 years with the best bloke I could wish for which was all that mattered until his sad demise in 2003.

When both of my daughters were born it was during a heavy snowfall so I got married in one and had my children in the snow ,I have never ever gone skiing ,just in case ,momentous things happen to me when its snowing :):)

beautiful_ravens

I love how a 'snow' thread brings out all the stories

Growing up in the 80's we lived in the middle of nowhere, we had wood and coal fires downstairs but no heating upstairs. There was usually ice on the inside of the windows and your breath in bed was a puff of steam. I always went to bed with pyjamas, socks, hot waterbottle, 2 quilts and sometimes a dog. My dad used to fill glass corona bottles with hot water and put them in a sock for an extra hot water bottle. Getting changed into other clothes was horrible and there were fights over sitting on front of the downstairs fire to do that. The upstairs sink and bath would regurgitate frozen water, so ice would appear in the plugholes, and we had a horrible outside toilet that was agony to sit down on if it was cold.

I live a bit further south now and we might get some sleet on Thursday!

Save

[Deleted User]

anyone remember growing up in the 50s? small paraffin lamp in the outside lav, newspaper squares threaded on a paper hanger. An ex army coat on the bed. One pair of shoes, home made coats made from second hand coats and skirts. Milk bottles in front of the fire at school, the ice used to make the foil tops pop up. Long ice sliding strips, made by the boys, when we all played out, no salt and sand then. Cold lino floors and hm rag rugs

Where has the time gone?

[Deleted User]

kittie we must be of a similar age Those milk bottles where the milk pushed the top off and the birds would have a field day, cod liver oil capsules at school and a spoonful of Virol for each of the kids in the class that we all queued up for and teacher had one spoon to feed 39 kids in my class It was done in alphabetical order and my surname began with 'B' so I was OK with that, but heaven help the Smiths in the class who had lots of other kids in front of them slurping off the same spoon ! and if some of them had colds or runny noses Yuk, but we all survived and very little H&S in those days.

I remember falling over and cutting my chin sliding in school, and being taken to the local hospital by my teacher to have it stitched up and him insisting that I learned by heart the nine time table while we waited I have never forgotten it either.I was seven
When we got back to school the head mistress tearing me off a strip for sliding and saying I deserved my stitches and perhaps I wouldn't be so silly again. :):).

Then got another telling off from my Mum when I got home for being so daft .Not a lot of sympathy back then, you had to have a stiff upper lip and get on with things.
Today there would have been social workers and the school would probably have closed for reports to be written and the teacher and head would probably got suspended ,and Compo would have been the issue :):) Made us tough back then :):)

[Deleted User]

Certainly do! Ice fans on the inside of single glazed windows when we woke up in the morning, no bathroom just a tin bath that was hung up in the yard, no hot water system we had to boil the kettle for a wash and only the living room in the house had a fire to warm it up the others including the bedrooms were stone cold and you could see your breath when you breathed out. No Indoor loo, just the one in the yard and a gazunder under each bed for use in the night.

monnagran

Eeeeek! JackieO. Off subject but I felt the cockles of my heart warm up when I read how we were treated when hurt as children. Sympathy was in very short supply. I think that life in the forties was so tough that scraped knees, bumps and bruises were very small matters indeed. Adults were struggling with death, destruction and the attempt to survive. All their energies were spent on simply keeping everyone alive so if we had a few dents and damages it went under the category of "too bad."

In our house, mother never called the doctor unless she could hear the death rattle - or at least, that's what my brother and I reckoned.
This has stayed with me, which may explain why, when I had cause to be taken to A&E last year, they could not find any medical records for me.

Please will you stop pushing my nostalgia button! Once I start there's no stopping me.

Back to the snow...........

x

ripplyuk

monnagran wrote: »

Please will you stop pushing my nostalgia button! Once I start there's no stopping me.

Back to the snow...........

x

Aww...., does it have to stop? I'm loving these tales of the olden days