some wintry memories

Coming home from school to a cold house, warmed only by paraffin heater. Do you remember the smell? Or maybe mum had lit a fire but you couldn’t feel it because there was a clothes-horse around it, full of damp, steaming washing.

Buttercup syrup or Gees Linctus to sooth your cough. Having Vic ointment rubbed on your chest and nose when you had a cold – boy did it sting if you had a sore nose. Sena pod and raisin tea when you were constipated

Chilblains and sore calves from cold, wet wellies and lads dropping snowballs inside them. Why did your socks always slip down and end up in a ball on the end of your foot? Ballaclavas mum had knitted and woolly mittens held together with string and threaded through your coat sleeves, so that you didn’t lose them.

Ponds, lakes and rivers freezing over. Long icicles hanging from dripping overflow pipes. Bottles of milk on your doorstep that had frozen. The solid milk expanded and pushed the tops off. Sometimes bluetits had pecked the foil open to drink the cream.

Cars that wouldn’t start in the morning and had to be ‘pushed off’ or started by cranking a huge handle through the radiator.

Being the first one out in the morning and running through the fresh, virgin snow to leave your tracks. The fun of just watching your breath coming out as steam. Looking to the sky, watching snowflakes falling, how they hurt when they hit your eyeball.

Power cuts and the excitement of having to use candles to light the house.

Having a bath in front of the fire, then toasting bread or crumpets on a fork. Drinking hot milk and honey and snuggling up to mum or dad for a story before bedtime.