frozzen

Frozzen - a memory of my childhood.

I wrote this for a performance of readngs and carols in 2006.

Time was when a Yorkshire winter was a thing to be reckoned with, creeping in around the sash windows, sneaking under the doors and insinuating its icy fingers up between the floorboards to nip at any exposed bits of flesh it could find. These days, in our centrally heated houses, with the double glazing sealed tight, and the coal-effect fire blazing away, we are able to let the winters, such as they are, slip by without a second thought.

When I was a lad, to coin a phrase, how different things were. At that time, back in the early 1950's my family lived in an old barn of a house on the edge of the Holme Valley. We weren't badly off, but you'd have had to be royalty to afford the fuel to heat such a building to any sensible level. Of course, in common with everyone else at that time, my parents didn't even try. The further reaches of the house were regarded, more or less, as an extension of the great outdoors. In 1948 my father had taken the unprecedented step of removing the kitchen's old black-leaded range, and replacing it with a modern Rayburn cooker. At the time this caused me some consternation, and indeed some tears, as I just could not see how Santa - whom I knew to be large and jovial - could possibly get down the new narrow flue pipe.

The Rayburn meant that the kitchen was the only room in the house which was ever really warm in winter - and I apply that word in the loosest sense, since the floor was made of flagstone, and the sash windows had to have their gaps packed with newspaper sometime in late October, to make the indoor and outdoor weather conditions a little more distinguishable. If you had to make a trip to the bathroom, it was necessary to negotiate the hall and landing, where your breath hung in the air, as it does these days only at the bus-stop or on the railway platform, and to pass the doors of unused bedrooms where, if the wind was in the right direction, snow would sneak in through the newspaper packing and pile up on the inside windowsills. The bathroom itself was like a refrigerator, the only blessing being that the lavatory seat was made of wood.

At night father would take a shovel of burning coke into the "sitting room" and start the fire there. This involved piling coal on top of the coke, and then holding a sheet of newspaper over the opening until the fire roared and the newspaper started to turn brown. A moment's inattention and the paper would burst into flames, father would let go of the edges, and the whole flaming sheet would disappear up the chimney in a shower of sparks. Once the fire was well alight, father, mother, the dog and I would decamp to the sitting room to watch the flickering black and white images beamed to our Ekco TV from Holme Moss. The weather too, came straight from the moors, and though we had a mat at the door and thick velvet curtains, I knew that playing in the darker corners of the room, away from the friendly firelit circle where my parents sat, was akin to playing outdoors, and necessitated an extra pullover - and sometimes even gloves.

At night the beds were piled high with felty "utility" blankets, and the mornings saw the insides of the windows thick with the scribblings of old Jack Frost, and where I did on the odd occasion, wake to find my breath frozen to ice on the bedding.

I'm glad, now that I had that Yorkshire childhood, and that I've lived through a time when the seasons really meant something, and in common with generation upon generation of my forebears I've sat with my face to the light and fire, and my back to the cold and dark.I'm glad that I've heard the weather shake the window-sashes, and woken to a world blanketed in white, dragging my clothes on under the bedclothes before rushing out to build fortresses and fantasies in the snow. I look at the present cosseted generation of youngsters safe behind the double glazing, and I wish that they could experience those cold hard winters of my youth. I wish that they could - but I'm so glad I no longer have to.