Children in the Snow (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Wednesday, January 30, 2013, 17:18 (4317 days ago) @ peteressex

"Seconded" Peter !

Until 1972 I attended Bilson School in Cinderford, a hundred yards along from our house in Parragate (below the "new" Lidls store on the old Red & White bus depot plot). There was a sizable concrete playground on the Parragate Road side of the school, below the newer infant classrooms and sloping down to the canteen. Onto this playground surface dribbled the water from an overflow pipe in the wall of the main old school building, presumably from a toilet. Every winter in those days we had proper frosts and usually snow. Hence this overflowed water would usually freeze overnight and stay frozen the next day allowing us to happily slide down the ice "track" at playtimes. This would sometimes go on for a few days, the track getting longer every night as the overflow continued dripping. The supervising teachers wern't bothered at all, not even when we would extend the track by using our empty little milk bottles to add more cold water from the toilet taps !
Rather more naughtily, in the evenings a few of us local kids used to slide down the short but steep Parragate Road itself, next to the school playground & canteen. We did this until it was late, dark and cold, using good old tin trays, much faster than traditional sledges. I recall doing this under the streetlamp, you could see the ice patches shining, and we'd pickup snow from the grass verge to add to the slipperyness !. Our respected & intelligent parents (my dad was an Edwards bus manager and my mates's parents were teachers at RFDGS) knew we did this but saw no harm in it at all, I guess any sensible local car drivers wouldn't be attempting this particular section of the road so... !.

Similarly in the summer we thought nothing of racing down Dockham Road from above the St Annals junction down thro the blind bends below another mate's house on homemade trolleys & scooters. If a car came up we just pulled into the side (often painfully), despite occasional nearmisses no-one seemed to mind and the danger was of course the attraction to us. My mate's dad was Keith Harris, Town Clerk, who also didnt mind us doing these "dangerous" things; nor his near neighbour Olly Hill the coalman who used the roads everyday and who's sons played with us !

Yes we suffered regular minor injuries but surely that helped prepare us for the big wide world !
Happy days !!

ps last year my mate wrote a letter to the Review which mentions our "dangerous" upbringing, long summers in the woods, cycling, fishing etc etc; it was an excellent reflection of how things were as 70s kids and I think you'll enjoy it, I'll scan it and post it on this site in a day or two. Yes of course sadly one occasionally heard of a kid drowning in the Forest's ponds, so it wasn't all rosy, but...

PPS as much as I agree with your view re the schools closing, its not just the childrens "safety" that closes schools, or at least not here in West London. Three? years ago we had a stiff few weeks snow yet I insisted my son set off to secondary school in his boots. He'd get home complaining that a lot of kids who lived nearer school hadnt bothered. I was annoyed there was NO criticism of those who hadnt bothered, or gratitude to those who had. And when they did close the school for a day or so, it was invariably because the staff "couldnt" get to the school rather than the kids, as some were travelling quite a long way (albeit many via the clear M40 motorway, so ??. That said I also do sympathise with the schools, modern parents can be very fast to blame everyone but their child, or threatening legal action, unlike in our day when we were taught & learned "common sense", and were usually expected to live & learn by our mistakes, even painfull ones.