Going soft?

When I opened the curtains this morning, my heart sank a little as I looked out at our first snow of the winter, albeit only a sprinkling. From the warmth of the truck, I watched the birds as they flitted about in their search for food, for a breakfast, to fuel them through the day. Then for some reason, this got me thinking about the past. From the age of about six we lived in a council house, as did everyone that I knew and because it was new, it had central heating on the ground floor, real luxury. I remembered some of the winters, substantial snowfalls and frost were normal. Of a morning, our then pretty young Mom, would wake us for school before she went downstairs to light the coal fire, which heated the water for the radiators. Clambering over my disgruntled brothers bed, I would pull aside the curtains to look outside, to find the windows encrusted with ice. The net curtains would be locked in the ice on the glass. I would place the end of my thumb on the glass to defrost a hole through which I could look. "It's snowed, it's snowed" I would excitedly tell my brother Ian, whose head would wearily lift off his pillow as he sat up to check whether I was lying or not. The moisture in our breath was visible as we excitedly chatted and dressed. Mom made us wear a vest in winter, a white singlet beneath a grey flannelet shirt and a short sleeved jersey, that is now called a tank top. For the winter months we both had thick grey shorts and long grey woolen socks that were held up with bands of elastic called garters. We both hated wearing a vest, it was cissy, but our garters were essential and if one was displaced it would sometimes cause a minor skirmish. By the time we got down stairs, the fire would be burning bright, but with no heat in it yet and the room would be filled with the smell of coal and wood smoke. After breakfast, we put on our second hand corduroy "windjammer" jackets and knitted balaclava's before we set off for the mile and a half walk to school and a snowball fight or two, the last words from Mom would be "Have you put your vest on?" Sometimes, the snow would come up to our bare knees and beyond, our socks would be soaked before we had got two hundred yards. The leather of our "Tuff" shoes (a boring but quality brand) beginning to absorb the wet as we kicked about in the snow and slush. All day long we sat with wet feet, the schools never closed due to the weather, later with the shoe leather slowly beginning to turn white as it dried on our feet, it would be time to walk home again and tuck into a plate of sandwiches for tea, or if Dad had finished work a plate of belly pork or perhaps even neck of lamb.

Maybe this morning isn't so bad after all.