When the snow came down in lumps

It began falling in the early hours of the morning and by six had blanketed the township.

One by one the family attempted to get into work and school.

But the buses had stopped running, it was almost impossible to drive on to Beech Road and by nine o’clock even the schools had decided not to open.

So that January of 2009 became a snow day and more followed till the thaw set in.

All of which was a bit different to the winter of 1962-63.  At home in London it began snowing on Boxing Day and continued the following day.

Across the country the snow brought down power lines.

Snow lay 6 inches deep in Manchester city centre and 9 inches  in Wythenshawe while at Keele Univerity it reached a depth of 18 inches.

By the end of the month there were snow drifts eight feet deep in Kent and fifteen feet deep in the west and by January the sea had frozen for a mile out from the shore at Herne Bay.

And we still went to school with not a day missed from the end of the Christmas holiday till the thaw set in in March.

Not that we were any harder, tougher or more resilient than school children today , just that back then most of our teachers also lived close by which meant none of us had to face long difficult journeys.

But stories of the Big Freeze of 1963 are for another time along with the days we were sent home in 1962 because of the dreaded smog.

Still I would welcome  any one wanting to contribute their memories of the January of 2009, the winter of 1962-63 or the equally bad snow year of 1947.

Pictures, accounts, descriptions all will be gleefully accepted and sent back out on the blog.

Pictures; of Beech Road in January 2009 from the collection of Andrew Simpson