Snow

The commute home was bliss. I was expecting the usual cattle charge at KX as the platform wasn't advertised, but loitered by the obvious 365 standing in 8. It turned out that most people had either left early or stayed at home as the train wasn't even half full (seats, not logjam capacity). I had an entire bay to myself, which is unusual even in off peak times (which sometimes get more crowded than the peaks). The driver even remembered to turn the heating from off to sauna, but at least there are plenty of air vents.

I guess they have shut off the steps at West Ham leading to the old NLR platforms?

Just small bits left round here now, one or two clumps where the little darlings have decided to build a snowman with the snow, and not chuck it at anything that moves...

[Prepares for a howl of protest]

That's because Dorset is snowless.

I was at Southville Junior School in 1962-3, and it snowed Chistmas Day. My Dad took me and my brother to Bedfonf Recreation Ground on the south side of the A30 Great South West Road, just souht of the airport, Christmas Eve. In the end we had a blizzard! My Dad didb't have a Ford Anglia then but a '55 Popular...my '60 Model Anglia was bought in 1973! Sometimes I do indeed wonder how people cannot cope since that terrible winter, and yet that as as nothing compared to the terrible winter of 1947-8, which badly affected the railways.

Here's three shots showing what 1962-3 was like, when the thermometer did not go above freezing until March.







In those days we walked a mile or so to school and back, and because Mum went back to work as a Secretary, and that was unheard of [tongues wagged as she should have been a houswife still] we walked to and from school by ourselves. I would never dream of allowing my now 9-year old to walk to school even though we are 7 miles away and couldn't anyway.