OK so it’s snowing, and I know travelling conditions are not very nice… and really quite awful and dangerous in places, but really where is our grit and determination? OK so the grit is on the roads, but where is our pluck and courage.
A friend of mine who lived in Todmorden in Yorkshire, experienced really bad snow when she was young. Sometimes the lanes from where she lived to her school were full of it… so the children walked along the top of the dry stone walls, no doubt wearing Wellington boots!
A friend of my husband aged eight in the 1950’s was coming home from his school on the bus in a blizzard. The bus stopped and this little lad, probably wearing short trousers was put off the bus by the conductor and told to make his ownway home! Can you imagine it?! Eight years old. Totally lost he spotted the grandstand of Epsom race-course which was near where he lived, so he set off to walk there, right across the race-course in the snow. When he got home his mum wouldn’t let him in the house because she’d heard it was dangerous to warm up too quickly. He stood on the doorstep while she rubbed him with towels until she thought it was safe to bring him indoors… an eight year old would never have to walk through a blizzard on his own to get home now, would they?
When I was teaching in Oldham, many years ago, I was living in Manchester but the buses only went so far and I had to walk uphill the last few snowy miles. When I got there about half the students had made it in, but only three other teachers! We just sat them all in the hall and waited until more staff arrived or we could send them home!
It’s snowing in Uphill
Lois Elsden 
Brrr, but it looks pretty! I have no similar experience with snow but perhaps you know the “Little House” books, Lois, about the American west in the 19th century? The heroine, and the students, all brave blizzards on the bleak and endless prairie for school in a one room schoolhouse, etc. Our ancestors were tough cookies! It’s not too different this week in the UK is it?
They say Europe is in its coldest winter in decades. On behalf of the hot lower half of the globe I say thank you for putting up with it, because I feel like as long as the planet can make cold air somewhere, we’ll be ok. I’ve never learned to fear the cold but I fear that feverish heat that I know will be here in a few months!
love!
xoxo
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It’s been more wet than cold in Uphill and England generally, quite glad of a cold snap!
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Oh yes, I do know the ‘Little House’ books… tough people indeed!
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Great piece! Growing up in the monsoon region in Bombay, I use the exact same words as your title, for those who stop their life for ‘rain’! We’d walk to school with heavy backpacks in raincoats and drenched socks…and go right about our day like nothings amiss:)
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… and another thing about it is, what a fuss people make! All the moaning and complaining that goes on, weather is weather!
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And if anyone else in this office goes ‘It’s soooooo cold’, I am going to book them a single fare to Winnipeg on the company credit card.
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Hahahaha!!
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