It looks like we are in for a taste of winter over the next few days....with maybe a bit of snow. Winter......aaah, as a child I used to love the snow....but then I suppose all children love the snow. After all it really doesn't matter if you can't get to school. It just means more fun playing out in the stuff. I remember my dad making us a sledge.....it was one of those 'Share' things......you know, there are 4 of you but only one sledge.
This invariably led to arguments, wellies full of snow and even fisticuffs.
3 of us might get on the sledge..... but the position of number 3 was very precarious and usually meant that you would fall off long before you got to the bottom of the hill.
We would wax the runners so that the sledge would go faster. The tracks where we sledged soon became perilous to walk on. We would pray for more snow in the evenings when the dark forced us indoors......and would have long faces if, on taking the sledge out the next day, found that some miserable old bat had put salt or ashes on our sledging track.
We lived very close to Highams Lodge. It was a place that we were banned from visiting unless we had a grown up with us.....but water will always be a magnet to children. In summer we would go to the lodge armed with home made fishing nets and jam jars and fish for stickle backs......if we saw any adults we would hide in the bushes.....just in case it was someone who knew us and would tell our Mum. If we were found out we would be sure to get a pasting.
In winter we would go down there and skate on the ice. There were two sections of the lodge - one section was shallow and was quite a little way into the clough - the deep section was close to the mill.
We only ever fished or skated on the shallow section..... well, that was until one year my brother Michael (he who knew no fear - and couldn't swim) decided he would like to skate on the deep bit. We didn't have skates.....just our everyday shoes.....or on some occasions wellingtons.
This particular time Michael had just his everyday shoes on (thank goodness).....he didn't want to skate on the shallow bit with the rest of us - he was going to skate on the deep section, which incidentally was much larger. The ice was thick around the edges, but thinned out the further out into the lodge you went. Michael went further and further despite warnings that it was thinner ice further out. The inevitable happened and he went through the ice into the freezing water. I would be about 9 years old at the time. I grabbed a long branch from the side of the lodge and got down on all fours and edged out as far as I could.
I held out the branch and shouted for Michael to get hold of it.......with great effort I managed to get him out of the water. He was mottled blue with cold and shaking and shivering. I was really glad that he didn't have his wellingtons on.....I would never have got him out.....or worse his wellingtons would have been lost.
I was really scared about what my mother was going to do to us when we got back home. I was the eldest and this was supposed somehow to imbue me with 'common sense'.
It was freezing cold and Michaels clothes were starting to freeze on him as we hurried home.
I went into the house first and my mother looked at my face and knew immediatley there was something wrong......she came to the back door and saw Michael standing there freezing......she bustled back into the house and filled a 2 gallon enamel bucket with cold water. She said to Michael 'You like water.....do you? I'll teach you to like water. Well, here's some more' and she threw the bucket of cold water all over him.
She then got hold of him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him up the steps and into the kitchen.....his clothes were stripped off him in a couple of minutes flat.......the baby bath was filled with warm water and he was sat in it.....she put a blanket into the oven in the range and then she dried him roughly and wrapped him in the warmed blanket.....he was given hot cocoa and I was given a good hiding. Fancy getting a good hiding for saving your brothers life. Mind you once he had warmed up, she warmed his bum cheeks some more with the flat of her hand. Did we learn anything from this expedition.....I suppose we learned that it is best to cover your tracks and not get found out.....but we usually DID get found out. My Mother seemed to have either eyes or spies everywhere!
The following summer there was a little boy from Marsden Street who drowned playing near Howard and Bulloughs lodge.....Mother made a lot out of that and told us that is what would happen to us if we didn't do as we were told.
Nowadays, Winter gets into my joints.....snow and ice are no fun anymore!
This invariably led to arguments, wellies full of snow and even fisticuffs.
3 of us might get on the sledge..... but the position of number 3 was very precarious and usually meant that you would fall off long before you got to the bottom of the hill.
We would wax the runners so that the sledge would go faster. The tracks where we sledged soon became perilous to walk on. We would pray for more snow in the evenings when the dark forced us indoors......and would have long faces if, on taking the sledge out the next day, found that some miserable old bat had put salt or ashes on our sledging track.
We lived very close to Highams Lodge. It was a place that we were banned from visiting unless we had a grown up with us.....but water will always be a magnet to children. In summer we would go to the lodge armed with home made fishing nets and jam jars and fish for stickle backs......if we saw any adults we would hide in the bushes.....just in case it was someone who knew us and would tell our Mum. If we were found out we would be sure to get a pasting.
In winter we would go down there and skate on the ice. There were two sections of the lodge - one section was shallow and was quite a little way into the clough - the deep section was close to the mill.
We only ever fished or skated on the shallow section..... well, that was until one year my brother Michael (he who knew no fear - and couldn't swim) decided he would like to skate on the deep bit. We didn't have skates.....just our everyday shoes.....or on some occasions wellingtons.
This particular time Michael had just his everyday shoes on (thank goodness).....he didn't want to skate on the shallow bit with the rest of us - he was going to skate on the deep section, which incidentally was much larger. The ice was thick around the edges, but thinned out the further out into the lodge you went. Michael went further and further despite warnings that it was thinner ice further out. The inevitable happened and he went through the ice into the freezing water. I would be about 9 years old at the time. I grabbed a long branch from the side of the lodge and got down on all fours and edged out as far as I could.
I held out the branch and shouted for Michael to get hold of it.......with great effort I managed to get him out of the water. He was mottled blue with cold and shaking and shivering. I was really glad that he didn't have his wellingtons on.....I would never have got him out.....or worse his wellingtons would have been lost.
I was really scared about what my mother was going to do to us when we got back home. I was the eldest and this was supposed somehow to imbue me with 'common sense'.
It was freezing cold and Michaels clothes were starting to freeze on him as we hurried home.
I went into the house first and my mother looked at my face and knew immediatley there was something wrong......she came to the back door and saw Michael standing there freezing......she bustled back into the house and filled a 2 gallon enamel bucket with cold water. She said to Michael 'You like water.....do you? I'll teach you to like water. Well, here's some more' and she threw the bucket of cold water all over him.
She then got hold of him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him up the steps and into the kitchen.....his clothes were stripped off him in a couple of minutes flat.......the baby bath was filled with warm water and he was sat in it.....she put a blanket into the oven in the range and then she dried him roughly and wrapped him in the warmed blanket.....he was given hot cocoa and I was given a good hiding. Fancy getting a good hiding for saving your brothers life. Mind you once he had warmed up, she warmed his bum cheeks some more with the flat of her hand. Did we learn anything from this expedition.....I suppose we learned that it is best to cover your tracks and not get found out.....but we usually DID get found out. My Mother seemed to have either eyes or spies everywhere!
The following summer there was a little boy from Marsden Street who drowned playing near Howard and Bulloughs lodge.....Mother made a lot out of that and told us that is what would happen to us if we didn't do as we were told.
Nowadays, Winter gets into my joints.....snow and ice are no fun anymore!
