weeell obviously , I knock the children over in the rush to be first to write my name In the new frost
Reminds me of the scary walk to my nan's outside toilet - no light in there, so a paraffin lamp was carried out. Doubled as a heat source in the winter. Ah, the good old days - my ar$e !
This was my home for the last 24hours. Definitely no central heating but I was warm as toast tucked up in there last night. Who needs bricks?
I’ve got exactly the same kettle that the bruv in law got me for a birthday, they boil so quickly, put water in, pop on to heater, light it, turn around and it’s boiling ta da ! I can remember the corners in the windows having a tad more of Jack Frosts efforts, but it made being in bed much cosier. The weight of blankets and ex army coats etc used to give lots of kids nightmares especially the one where something is chasing you and you can’t move or run because your legs won’t work, back in the real world they’re trapped under an avalanche of coats. And sausages, everywhere, a sausage by the front door, one by the back door, one for the front room, and anybody that moved anywhere had to move various sausages or snakes to open any of the doors then put it all back before you sat down, if you forgot the biscuits you had the whole routine to go through again it wasn’t just the windows that were creaky and draughty and cold , but the doors too and none of them were double glazed or drought proofed. Some of the old door locks especially the 3/5 lever type had gaping great holes that let in howling gales. We was lucky if the door almost fitted properly too lol Ozziedog,,,,,,,,,,,, Good Times,,,,,,,,,,,. Maybeeeeeee
After seeing that heater, I’m reminded that my pals dad still comes out guzzling with us a couple of times a week. His claim to fame, apart from having arms like Popeye, is he used to be the local legend Esso Blue man back in the day. They used to hand pump hundreds and hundreds of gallons of paraffin oil of their tanker day in and day out throughout the winter, he was extra popular in the down town areas because he would let peeps have a little credit especially when it was really cold. I the summer his engineering experience shone through as he’d sharpen and repair lawn mowers. When they hit retirement , him and his partner, the both businesses folded up naturally around them. Virtually nobody needed Esso Blue any more,they’d mostly gone to gas, and the mowers? People throw them away now and just buy another from Mr B&Q , Ozziedog,,,,,,,oh things change
The University halls of residence back in the early 1980s had single glazing and I can remember a party somebody held in their room. Ice was forming on the inside of the window. When the party finished we crashed out on the floor and if you werent lucky enough to get even a corner of a blanket you started to get hypothermia. I gave up and staggered back to my room a couple of miles away. A friend who left about the same time considered goimg to sleep in the gutter as he was now "nice and warm" after shivering in the room. Fortunately he also staggered back and realised the next day how lucky he was to carry on rather than sleep. A year after graduating, the core plugs froze out on my Morris Marina car engine. So I bashed them back in.
I loved the leaf-like patterns the frost would make on my bedroom window. Once rugged up I’d run my nail all round it, carving up a butter-curl of white ice as I went. My granny’s house was so cold that in the morning I’d have to sit on my hands on the loo seat as it was way too cold for my butt
On very cold days it was actually quicker to walk on the frozen canal from our house to school when it was frozen we could either walk on it ( which most of us did ) or just walk across it to the towpath the other side which wasn’t accessible normally.
