The winter snows of 1963

Blog,

Mr Jessop popped round to the mansion ,before breakfast today with my photo which I couldn’t send to you a couple of days ago Blog. I offered him a coffee by way of a ‘thank you’, but he said he couldn’t stop as he had a shop or two or two hundred to shut up, or rather, shut down.

Photograph Quiz:

Photo no. 129:- Appropriate to my letter to you Blog …. So who won this?

Dearest Blog,

               Got your woolly undies ready? According to the doom and gloom merchants in the weather forecasting departments of the media, snow is on the way. It was fifty years ago today, well actually it was boxing day …. So, ‘it was fifty years ago on Boxing Day, that the snow it snowed and it snowed and it snowed’. In fact it should read, ‘it was fifty years ago LAST boxing Day, that it snowed and it snowed and it snowed.’ In the September of 1962, the Head of Sixth Form at my Grammar School had lectured all the sixth formers that if we entertained any hopes of getting a place at University, it was most important that we had a hobby and that it was essential that we were articulate and knowledgeable about it. At interview, he went on to tell us, the University staff would assume that we were academically able, and the interview would focus on our out of school interests. How right he was! I assume I have told you about it before, Blog, so to cut a long story very short, I became a ‘Harrier’!!!!!!!! (If I haven’t related to you before the whys and wherefores of my starting to run, let me know and I will expand at length on the topic!!) Remember that in those far off days, there were not many universities and obtaining a place for someone from my social background was not very easy. So any tip that might help gain me admission was taken very seriously. So I started running in September. Once interested in something I tend to obsessive and go way, way over the top. So it was with running; from doing only the running imposed on us by the school’s P.E. staff, I decided that if I wanted to succeed in this sport, I should have to run each and every day. So come Boxing Day 1962, it was on with the kit, out of the front door and up the hill to the moorlands. It was snowing when II left home, but not too much. A couple of hundred feet higher up the lane and the picture was entirely different. The snow was deep, the snow was drifting in the strong wind and the snow was forming into deep drifts. Running soon became difficult as the depth of the drifts across the roads made running an impossibility. Clearly, discretion was the better part of valour and I decided to turn back towards home. Henry would have agreed with me.

 The winter into 1963 got pretty desperate with repeated snow storms, sub-zero temperatures, iced up roads and pavements. The local councils could not cope with the conditions. I knew that the weather was exceptional, but this was my first winter of running and, as I had nothing to compare the conditions for running in other winters, I accepted that training went on no matter what the prevailing weather. So I went on training no matter what the weather conditions were!!! I knew no better. Each and every day, with the occasional Friday off if my club, Bingley Harriers, had a race on the Saturday. The point I am trying to get over to you Blog, is that it started to snow on Boxing Day covering everywhere with a thick blanket of white … and the next time I saw grass, roads, pavements without snow was in the first week of March when the club travelled down to Cambridge for the National Cross Country Championships. For me, it was a baptism of fire, training every day in appalling conditions. But I knew no other. I thought this winter was the norm. In the days, months and years to come, whenever I felt like not doing a training session, the thought of my first winter never failed to spur me on and it was ‘on with the kit and out of the front door’. I can honestly say that in fifty years of trudging, I don’t think I have chickened out of ANY session, not ever nohow!!

 As an aside:- At my school, a northern grammar school, I suppose again because of my social background, you never talked to teachers. Ever. They were them and regarded, certainly by my parents, as unapproachable. Remember Blog, there was no such thing as ‘parent’s evenings’ in those days. The only contact between parents and staff was the school report which appeared regularly three times each year … and of course, the one describing my progress during the first term, September to December, was always crap. Why you ask Blog. I’ll tell you why Blog. My parents could not afford school dinners for me so I had to trail home each and every day. Plenty of time to do the return journey because school dinner time at the northern boys Grammar School was 90 minutes. Blog, I kid you not. Ninety minutes. Nine zero.  An hour and a half for everyone else who stopped for school dinners was a long time to kill. So what did they do? They did collaborative homework. And inevitable, they all got good marks from the teachers. Poor old me, had to do homework at night by myself, and it was less than perfect, needless to say. So. At the end of each Christmas term I was always near the bottom of the class, with all the hassle that that entailed. Come the Spring and Summer term reports, I was at or near the top of the class because reports depended on performance in the termly exams. Teachers never questioned this state of affairs because pupils didn’t talk to teachers. Ever.

 It came as something of a shock to me therefore when, soon after starting Latin in our second year (year eight to you Blog), my teacher turned to me at the start of the lesson and simply said ‘Good letter that Kirkham. Quite amusing’. Nothing else. Straight into amo, amas, amat and no messing… And of course the rest of the class were itching to find out what he was talking about. Come the end of the lesson, I was the centre of attention. Now remember Blog, I must have been all of twelve years old. I had to explain to my mates that I had written to the BBC programme ‘Any Questions’ and had my letter read out on air on the follow-up programme ‘Any Answers’. Obviously my Latin master had heard the programme. Obviously the programmes were not de rigueur for any of my class mates!!!! As an aside, I believe my Latin master was later High Master at Manchester Grammar School, so he must have been good???

 The only other member of staff ever to comment to me was my sixth form master cum maths tutor, who used to pass me most nights on the top moorland road on his way home from school while I was out trudging in the slush and snow. I knew no better, I always ran the same course.

                                          Colin