When snowflakes came from the sky

DURING the winter of 1946/7 — one of the harshest of modern times — i was six and my brother was five. though the country was blanketed with snow from January until March, our school in New romney, kent, was open the entire time. Each day we trudged (alone) two-and-a-half miles from our home in Greatstone-on-sea across the marshes, through waist-high snow drifts and crossing frozen dykes, to school. We made the same journey home in the dark. Our classrooms were not heated and we sat shivering at our desks wearing balaclavas, macs and woollen gloves, our feet numb with cold. With our frozen fingers, we would write with chalk on green cardboard ‘slates’. Apart from the free third-of-a-pint of milk during the 15-minute morning break, the only food was a hot lunch of delights such as pig liver stew with lumpy mashed potato and cabbage that had been boiled to death, followed by a milk pudding we called frog spawn. But we were uncomplaining and survived without any major health problems — other than regular outbreaks of mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough and scarlet fever. in winter, it was common to have chilblains — itchy swellings on the feet from poor circulation. With schools these days closing at the merest hint of inclement weather, i wonder how the snowflake generation would have coped.

Bob Readman, Bournemouth, Dorset.