General Chat

1947, I was just a toddler then but I recall the chaos. No buses or cars moved. Snow half way up the wall of the house. No coal man equals no coal. Everyone froze . No NHS is those days. There's probably not been a winter like it in living memory. We used to sleep all in the same bed with my Father's overcoat on the top of us. Ice on the insides of the windows.

As well as the weather David, coal was in very short supply, as was gas and all other commodities. Things were more difficult after the war than they were during it. In the spring of 1947 there were awful floods owing to all the melting snow, it then turned into one of the hottest summer's we've ever had!! 1962/3 was as bad, if not worse not quite as much snow, but a lot colder.(too cold to snow!) It started snowing on Boxing Day, then everywhere froze solid, pipes, inside walls and windows (no central heating then), the ground was like iron, the Thames froze and an Ox was roasted on it at Oxford,the first time for about 60 years, then it got a bit warmer, and snowed heavily then intense cold and so it went on till the middle of April. The next year was one of the mildest winter's on record, lucky really as OH and I got married in February '64 and here we are coming up 53 years later!!!! <3

What memory's we have, that far back. Not only was there no NHS in 1947 but food and clothing were being rationed. No gas or electric fires to go around, scarcely any coal. The coal man couldn't get down the lane as the snow was so deep.

I remember the winter of 1947 ............. huddling round a little fire if we could get some coal.

Magpie .........

....... a lot of people have forgotten, or never knew, that there was in fact a mini depression after the war ended. Men came home from the war, or restricted employment ended, but there were no jobs for them. Women who had worked throughout the war also found themselves without jobs as they were replaced by men. My father had been in restricted employment, but ended up without a job. It took him about 6 months to find another job. That's when my mother went back to work for the first time since she had married in 1928 .............. she found a part-time job in a ladies and children's dress shop. That helped a little bit.

Plans for the NHS must have been in progress in 1947, as it came into force in June 1948 ........... and we all know how fast government works :-D


I was at university in Liverpool in 1962-63 during the deep freeze. It was bitterly cold .............. and most of our classes and labs were in old buildings! There was very little snow clearing, and side streets stayed with the rutted frozen snow for weeks.

A flatmates boyfriend bought her some flowers during that awful winter and when we came in after college, the water was frozen solid!!! After that my parents insisted (think of being able to do that these days!) that I lived at home as did friends! I think they seriously thought we would freeze to death! Travelling was so difficult (the bus) and always took hours! My mothers cooking and a warm bed was worth it though!!
I can only just remember 1946/7, but I do remember the snow way over my head, and my mother telling me to rub my hands to warm them, in front of the thimbleful of gas fire in our bedsit!

It was a very difficult time. Despite having 2 very small children and expecting a third, my Mother worked in the distemper part of Dampney's Paint Works down the road.
The city I was born in was heavily bombed during WW2 so there was a lot of homeless people in addition to their being hungry.

What do you remember about the winter of 1962/3 David?

I would have been walking "up the hill" to school in 1947 ................ but I can remember very little of it :-(

I wasn't even a twinkle in 1947, but I remember 62/63.
We'd not long moved from Malta - to Lossiemouth, on the North West coast of Scotland. Not as North as the Highlands, but very exposed, so in one fell swoop, I went from wearing just knickers,(I was very young!!) to wearing a liberty bodice.
Oh, and we lived in a caravan (a Bessacarr for caravan enthusiasts) in Lossiemouth.

So, it snowed, and snowed. Inside the caravan, it became quieter and, strangely, warmer.
You do know that caravan doors open outwards, right?
Also that very few caravans (even static ones) had inside loos either.
Ours was a bucket in a shed.

Well, morning came, the door wouldn't open :-S
It didn't bother me, I had a potty (for night time only), that I could utilise.
My parents and elder siblings though......

We were covered in about 3 ft of snow - wonderful insulation (hence it got warmer), however, I couldn't quite understand my dad's concern (apart from wanting to use the loo), but of course, the snow also blocked the vents and cut off the air supply rather a lot, the lighting was gas, and there were 6 of us in a tiny caravan.
It was so tiny that my 'bed' was board and foam laid over the tiny bath that had never been plumbed in, opposite the bunk beds, and one of my brothers slept on the sofa

I'm not sure how we got out, I was too busy keeping out of the way, in my bed with the cat, reading by torchlight!!
Once the door was opened, dad spent the next few hours releasing other people from their 'snow tombs'.

My Mum told me about snow over the hedges and the length of time it lasted. Was this awful time the early part of 1947 or the end?

I was born in Norwich in late July 47, but prior to that my parents were in a small village 3 miles from Buckingham, living with my paternal grandmother. They had been there since very early 1946 after their Norfolk wedding but Mum and Gran didn't get on, especially after my brother was stillborn, so they moved back to Norwich, Mum's home city, where she had all her sisters and brothers. (Her father died suddenly on his allotment in the spring of 1947 and her Mum had died when Mum was 16.) I am unsure when they moved, it may be that they came back when the snow thawed, if my pregant Mum was having to walk along country lanes. There wouldn't have been that many hedges with snow as deep along the roads of Norwich.

In 1962/63 I was in my last year at school, but don't remember much about bad weather. I lived fairly close to school but had to come home for lunch, Mum's rules, so it must have been a struggle to get clothes and boots etc dry in the lunch hour etc

Lizx

I can remember the snow of 62/63. Like everyone of that time, we walked to the village school. Overhearing a conversation between the Attendance officer and the headmistress who was also our teacher, apparently our school had a better attendance rate than those in the nearest town. My friend’s father took her and her 2 brothers to school on his tractor.

Somewhere or other I’ve a photo of me, a different friend and her sister lying against an iceberg. It was somewhere on the Thames and Medway estuary in Kent.

Grandad liked to help to prepare the vegetable plot by double digging. That happened later than normal because the ground was so hard. A bit later – weeks? A month? – Dad called us to look at the un-melted snow that had been buried during the initial ‘dig’.

We were lucky in comparison with others as we had an open fire in the living room, a coke stove in the kitchen and some sort of portable paraffin heater which was left in the hall. Thank goodness for hot water bottles at bed time!

The worst snow I can remember was the fall in Jan 1987. We were snowed in for a couple of days. OH’s boss on the outskirts of London couldn’t understand why he and others who lived further down into Kent couldn’t get into work. They had a miserly couple of inches whilst we had about 3ft. Not unusually you may say if you live in the north, but this was in Kent! The head teacher of the local primary school told us how she and her husband would take a walk to their car stranded on the A2 everyday for about a week to see if they could retrieve it.

Mum didn’t talk much about the War or its immediate aftermath, but did mention how difficult it was to get coal during the freeze of 1947.

Children of today don’t know the meaning of ‘snow’ or ‘cold’. ;-)

It was the winter of 1946/7, so early 1947. It started in December's 46 and went on till March '47. Then there were awful floods, then a very hot summer! Like 1975! Apart from my mother marrying my stepfather I don't remember anything else about that year!!

It must have been 1976 or 77, living in Shetland, on West Burra, an island (connected by a bridge to the mainland) 12 miles from Lerwick.
I spent most of my time alone, well, with the lodger's dog, in a croft house next to a voe (inlet), 5 fields from the road, nearly 2 miles from the nearest public phone, and 3 miles from the nearest bus stop.
My then boyfriend (now ex) and the lodger worked about 20 miles away, and came home one weekend a month.
The ex and I had arranged to meet in Lerwick one April evening on a Saturday for a drink.
It was a lovely sunny day, so I walked the 3 miles to the stop and caught the bus - the only bus of the day - to Lerwick, and hung around town until we were due to meet.
We were sat chatting etc when, about 7pm, it started snowing.
By 8pm, the snow was falling in a blizzard, we casually wondered how many cars would have thought to put on snow chains, or even have them in the boot.
By 9pm, people were panicking.
We left the pub at 10. Over 4 ft of snow had fallen.
I phoned John ( 'taxi' ) who usually gave me a lift home - he'd already tried to get to Lerwick to pick me up - we hadn't called him - he KNEW I was in Lerwick!!! - he couldn't get up the hill to Scalloway, even with snow chains on.
Apparently, there was only one taxi with snow chains on in Shetland that night - and he wasn't going to venture out to 'remote' parts!

We went to the big hotel - no rooms available - and the snow had, by capillary action, made it's way up my flares, and dropped out all over the foyer of the hotel.
Next the seamen's mission - not rooms. Every house that said it was a B & B - no rooms.
Eventually, we ended up in the police station. They gave us a cell each :-(
The next morning, at 6am, we were unceremoniously ousted.
Ex found the minibus from where he was working - and got a lift back to work.

I had to walk 12 miles home in platform shoes and flared jeans, and the snow compacted up the legs of my trousers :-(
Bear in mind, much of the snow hadn't been flattened by traffic - it was, for the most part, 4ft of 'virgin' snow!!!
It took me five and a half hours.
I've never worn heels or flared trousers since.

I arrived back at the croft house to find the landlord, (who lived half a mile away, but kept his sheep in the fields surrounding our house), and the lodgers dog outside waiting for me - he knew I was on my way, and, as we never locked the door of the house, he got the dog out.
I'd left the radio on for the dog (I never lived THAT down!) - and expected to be back the previous night.
He told me to go to his house for a bath - our croft house had no bathroom, and- yet again - the loo was a bucket in a shed!!


Not sure if I found the fact that everyone appeared to know my movements and whereabouts before I did, comforting or a bit creepy!
Maybe I was noticeable as I was a female living alone in such a remote place.

Two oil workers lived on the opposite side of the voe at Papil, on East Burra - about a quarter of a mile away as the crow flies..
Quite often, on calm days, they'd shout across 'Dae ye wont tae come fae Tea?', and I (and the dog) would walk the 6 miles around the voe for a cuppa.
We didn't often walk the 6 miles back as John the taxi would be waiting somewhere on the route back, to take me home!!

Maggie, you have lived such an interesting life, you really should write a book!

Magpie, thank you for answering my question.

Lizx

Liz, I'd say I've live in interesting places, with interesting (and on the whole), nice people - and been lucky with the people I met.!!

I'd say I was 'well protected' in Shetland, by those around me, especially 'John the taxi'.
I used to go food shopping on a Saturday - walk to Hamnavoe to catch the bus, get my shopping, then go to the Lounge Bar for a drink.
Aly Bain and a group of friends were usually playing there, I got 'into the spirit' - and sometimes, quite pished.
Somehow, John would turn up and take me and my shopping home - very occasionally to his home, where his wife fed me coffee!!
I'd get home to find the dog had been exercised and fed by either the landlord or landlady.
Actually, they used the dog, a border collie called Ben to round up their sheep.
Ben started off with a 'basic' attitude to rounding up sheep - grab them by the throat and pull them down.
Where we'd lived before, I'd managed to train him to have a slightly more sophisticated attitude to sheep - and not grab their throats.

The landlords at Burra had a female Sheltie, Misty, who was also useless at rounding up sheep. Using the two, the dogs encouraged each other to refine their act, and they became quite good together.
Many a morning I woke up late, to find the dog missing - yes, the landlord had 'borrowed' him!!

I also used to have drinking competitions in another bar - The Queens Hotel - with bolshy Swedish and/or Icelandic fishermen.
Not sure how it started, but if fishermen came in the bar looking for a fight, I, (all 7 stone of me) would challenge them to a drinking competition, as they were so tough. Rolling my own cigarettes also gave me a little 'kudos' apparently.
They'd buy me Whisky macs - they'd usually drink vodka - I always won, and they'd slink away defeated by a woman half their size, who could 'roll her own'!!

What they didn't know was that the barman would put a lot of water in my drink - I didn't care, I hadn't paid, a fight was averted, and they weren't so 'gung-ho' the next time they came in!!

I'd just like to say, I only went out once or twice a week - I wasn't an alcoholic, just a bit of a 'binger'!!! :-D :-D :-D

Well I love your stories. Maggie! I must admit I have been told in the past that I should write a book, having had a few 'adventures' and been a bit, shall we say, crazy lol

I bet a lot of people still remember you, in the best possible way lol

Lizx

That very severe winter in the sixties. I recall there was a lot of work going on at Newcastle Airport
.
The main contactor was Martin Cowley, he went broke,

My Father's employer Wimpey took over.
My Father worked on a huge steam generator seven days a week.
This machine blew steam night and day on to the newly laid concrete so that it wouldn't crack in the severe frosts.

Interesting David, but what were you doing?!

I remember the winter in the 60s. My parents had just moved to a house in a group of 6 a quarter of a mile from the nearest village with fields front and back. The house faced east and the garage doors had been mended several times. This was due to the vicious east wind we were yet to experience that blew the doors out of your hands and snapped them!! I still went to my old school in the city 10 miles away and caught the bus. When the snow came, that vicious east wind blew the snow into drifts as high as the hedges and the footpaths weren't even visible. There was no central heating in the house and the windows would be thick with ice inside in the mornings. The bus home from school froze up 2 villages away one night and I had to walk home down the slushy furrows in the road as the pavements were impassable. I remember pulling my clothes into bed with me in the mornings to warm them up a bit before dressing and we even slung our coats on top of all the blankets on our beds.

Ann, I used to fold my undies and put them down the bed to keep them warm, it was too awful to put on cold damp clothes first thing so anywhere I was with no heating, I would do that. Had coats on the bed when we were youngsters too

Thank heavens for electric blankets and now duvets.

Lizx