Winter is here and lovely summer days seem a distant memory. Fuel prices have rocketed since last year and we are all braced for the bills yet to come.
Winter when we were children had its attractions, and although the house had no central heating, just a coal fire, we didn't actually freeze. We had some very harsh winters and I remember them well, our world remained white and frozen for weeks on end and we just adapted to that. Few roads were cleared and as a result, what traffic there was simply moved more slowly. We rarely missed school and for most people life simply went on. Market gardeners and farmers probably had the hardest time of it, but even they seemed to manage somehow. I don't recall any old people dying from the cold, though of course a lot of the elderly may well have faded away in the winter months. The main difference I suppose was that we wore lots and lots of clothes, even in the house, and rather than dispersing to different rooms, we's all sit around the single fire in the evenings and hustle into freezing bedrooms with hot water bottles.
The press has been sensationalising the prospect of a severe winter once again. They do it to sell papers of course but I hope that they are wrong. I know that I feel the cold these days and do not enjoy it much at all.
Then there is Christmas - my least favourite time of the year. It started a few weeks ago of course, with the local Co-op selling mince pies in festive boxes with sell by dates in late october and early november. Call me a miserable old git but there was something nice about having a right time for things. Mince pies appeared in the week before christmas along with exotic fruits like tangerines and dates and figs; now we can get everything at any time of the year, and that makes nothing very special. We are drifting into blandness and no-one seems to be in control.
Winter when we were children had its attractions, and although the house had no central heating, just a coal fire, we didn't actually freeze. We had some very harsh winters and I remember them well, our world remained white and frozen for weeks on end and we just adapted to that. Few roads were cleared and as a result, what traffic there was simply moved more slowly. We rarely missed school and for most people life simply went on. Market gardeners and farmers probably had the hardest time of it, but even they seemed to manage somehow. I don't recall any old people dying from the cold, though of course a lot of the elderly may well have faded away in the winter months. The main difference I suppose was that we wore lots and lots of clothes, even in the house, and rather than dispersing to different rooms, we's all sit around the single fire in the evenings and hustle into freezing bedrooms with hot water bottles.
The press has been sensationalising the prospect of a severe winter once again. They do it to sell papers of course but I hope that they are wrong. I know that I feel the cold these days and do not enjoy it much at all.
Then there is Christmas - my least favourite time of the year. It started a few weeks ago of course, with the local Co-op selling mince pies in festive boxes with sell by dates in late october and early november. Call me a miserable old git but there was something nice about having a right time for things. Mince pies appeared in the week before christmas along with exotic fruits like tangerines and dates and figs; now we can get everything at any time of the year, and that makes nothing very special. We are drifting into blandness and no-one seems to be in control.
