By Dave Kirkbride

Published at 11:40, Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Memories of my pre-teen childhood in the 1950s in Workington bring me images of deep snow in the terraced streets when we were told by our parents to go out with a shovel and clear all the snow from the older people’s doorways.

Sledging in Carlisle in March 1981

We would do it for a while and then start throwing shovelfuls of snow at each other and then turn the shovels over and run tracks in the snow creating roadways for us to play in, seeing how high we could build the mounds of snow in the street.

Yet the weather ‘experts’ tell us we didn’t have snow like that in those days and that this is the most snow since records began. So is my memory playing tricks on me?

On every street with a slight hill, I can remember local kids creating a slide in the snow until it was very icy and smooth to make it very fast when you ran at it. Us kids would line up to see who could get the furthest.

Falling over wasn’t a problem as we just got up amid laughter and went to the back of the queue again.

There was always an ice slide in Saint Michael’s Junior School playground on Station Road from the gate to the building as it had a great hill.

We would all have a great time on it and I don’t ever remember the teachers or anyone putting salt on it because of safety issues.

It would take me ages to get home from school as there was an ice slide on every street and you just had to try them.

On Beeby Street where I lived we only had outside toilets at the end of the yard and in the winter my dad had the cistern pipe lagged with sacking and a paraffin heater sat in the corner to stop it freezing up.

There was a storm lantern hanging from the cistern and it gave a warm inviting glow at the end of the yard and even in the freezing conditions it was warm when you opened the latch door.

Of course it was my favourite place in the winter and I would sneak in there to read my comics and only come out when I heard my mam shout “David! Are you out there again?”

I can remember it was a regular trip for me to Percy Clark’s Hardware Store on Station Road to get a gallon of pink paraffin for the heater and lamp.

Recently, at the start of the bad weather, I was chatting with my son about his grandad and the paraffin heater and how cosy it was.

Days later he came up to the house with a paraffin heater he had come across, similar to the one I described from my childhood.

We got some paraffin and set it up in the kitchen and it’s been used regularly since. I have since bought a storm lantern. Ahh... memories!

So the winters were hard back then and we didn’t have central heating and yet we seemed to cope better.

Maybe it just seems that way because there was less travel in those days and less things like cars and planes to go wrong than there is today.

But I do know one thing. My wife is grateful that we don’t have a shed at the bottom of the garden because she suspects I would disappear with a good book and not reappear until I heard the call, “David! Are you out there again?”

Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk