Chilly childhood now only a foggy memory
Ian Cole remembers shock of entering a house with more than one warm room
I REMEMBER as a kid I was always cold in winter. Heating in our weatherboard house with a tin roof and of course no insulation back in the ’50s was simple but ineffective.
It was an open fire in one room where we sat in the evening listening to the wireless.
Getting out of bed and getting dressed (sometimes dressing in bed in order to stay warm) was done with haste to prevent snap freezing.
Electric blankets were science fiction and there was no shower to get warm as we only had a bath.
That was reserved for Saturday night in order to be clean for Sunday School the next day.
Getting to school didn’t help matters either, as classrooms had few heaters. So, being cold was normal.
Maybe heating a whole house didn’t exist in the ’50s, but Warmrays and Convair heaters started to appear. Then I remember going to someone’s house in the ’60s and they had an oil heater.
I didn’t know houses could be so warm! More than one room was being heated!
Later came woodheaters to heat the whole house followed these days by heat pumps.
So to my main point. A whole generation since the ’60s may have grown up in warm houses!
OK, I’ll stop there and reflect on those who can’t find accommodation and those that do, who cannot afford to heat their rooms.
My hazy memories of being cold as a kid pale into insignificance to those who are presently sleeping rough, who are sleeping in tents or who can’t afford any heating in their accommodation.
However, there are kids of Baby Boomers who are used to warm houses and who may well now have warm accommodation of their own.
I’m not sure whether it did me any good or harm growing up in a cold house where you could see your breath of a morning, have fogged up windows as well and where chilblains were an everpresent fear. But I must say I didn’t miss much school due to coughs or colds.
Some cultures elsewhere have a different perspective on the cold, exemplified by the Asian saying,
“Better the chill blast of winter than the hot breath of a pursuing elephant.”
Getting out of bed and getting dressed (sometimes dressing in bed in order to stay warm) was done with haste to prevent snap freezing.
Back in the ’50s we probably didn’t get pursued often from school in Moonah by too many elephants, just the occasional bodgie, but we still felt the chill of winter.
Even on Sundays sitting in Sunday School we were cold listening to the words in St Matthew’s gospel, “Many are called but few are chosen.”
But sitting in those cold pews, we were happy at least about the fact as another saying goes, that
“Many were cold but few were frozen.”
So thinking back to my childhood, I am very thankful I am in a warm house today.