Yahoo News You think this is cold? Try living through the winter of 1963
Breaking news: it’s cold. The weather forecaster on the lunchtime news was in quite a tizz about it. “It’s going to be VERY COLD!”
No, it really isn’t. Get a grip. This is not cold. I am just about old enough to recall the winter of 1963. Not too well. A vivid white glimmering scene, slippery and elusive as memory itself. I was toddling down the path at the side of our house and, where the walls usually stood, there were towering sheets of ice on either side. It was South Wales’s answer to the north face of the Eiger.
Beginning abruptly before Christmas 1962, it was the coldest winter for 200 years. Only the winters of 1683/84 and 1739/40, aka The Great Frost, were chillier. Like most people back then, we didn’t have central heating. A Rayburn in the kitchen was the only source of warmth. There is a picture of me looking coy in a plastic bath in front of it. I think I can remember how freezing it was when you went upstairs – icy as stone, the chill smacked you in the face – but that may have been another house, another winter.
With temperatures lower than minus 20C, the sea froze. Explosives were used to break up the ice on key waterways. Pneumatic drills dug up carrots and potatoes and electric current melted the ice in frozen water pipes. It went on and on, that winter. Snow stayed on the ground for 60 days and it rarely went above freezing for three months.
A few years later, we staggered and whooped our way through snow drifts on the way to primary school. The drifts were much bigger than we were. Wellies disappeared first. You could barely lift your legs out of the snow, so deeply stuck were they in the feathery flakes. Once, David Phillips fell in and only his head was showing; a farmer stopped and pulled him out with a tow-rope on his tractor.
Wearing a hat wasn’t optional like it is now. You wore a hat or you got a freezing migraine, ears blazing, lips chapped. Woollen mittens compacted, solid; it felt like putting your hands in wood. Most of our clothes were hand-knitted back then and the wool got frosty then soaking wet as it melted. Teeth actually chattered. Unlike today, schools didn’t close. Our toilets were in the playground and the teacher brought a kettle from the staff room to pour boiling water down the pan so we could have a wee.
I had a bottle-green gabardine mac for school. It became heavier and heavier under the weight of melting ice and snow until I felt like I was wearing a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea diving suit. When we finally got there, the gabardine macs hung dripping in the cloakroom next to the big radiator, steaming like horses.
What’s the coldest winter you can remember? Do send me your memories so today’s centrally-heated, puffa-jacketted Snowflakes (ahem) realise how lucky they are. THIS IS NOT COLD.
