Thread 19 - TalkLair: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 18)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

In the TalkLair, the fairy lights are festooned on the mantlepiece, the tree is twinkling with baubles, the mince pies are in the oven, the MN legendary chicken is ready to feed the hordes. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

@Britinme - Do you remember the Big Freeze of 1962/63? I do, but mainly because we had come back from 3 years in Singapore and moved to Dorset in the September of 62. My mother doomed us by saying "At least it won't be cold in winter." At the beginning of the school term we still couldn't get out of the back door, but fortunately the front path had been cleared, as had the pavement, so she sent me off to get the bus as usual.

Three other parents were equally stupid, so four of us walked the 2 miles or so from the army camp to school in the nearest town. We had to walk in the tracks left by army trucks as the snow was shoulder-height. When we eventually got there - it took two or three hours - the caretaker said "Are you mad? Obviously the school's closed!" and sent us home. We got back in time for tea and my mother was enraged that he hadn't somehow rustled up lunch.

Character-building, eh?

@Gonners yes I do remember that! Luckily I lived only a couple of hundred yards from my school, and I don’t remember it being closed, but I do remember the icy cold. We had been in England (returning from India where I was born) for eight years by then so winter felt normal, but according to my mother when we first returned when I was almost 5 I begged to go out and play in the snow, which I had never seen before, but soon came in crying because it was so cold. It’s a lot colder over here in the winter than I was used to in England!

We had previously lived in Austria and Germany, though Singapore had wiped that from my mind. But people around here remember 1962-3 as the winter the sea froze for up to a mile off the East Kent coast!