Chez Kay
Andrew Kay on woolies, wellies and four wheel drives
Are you as concerned about global warming as I am? I mean it has been a particularly mild winter so far, a bit wet and drab maybe, with a few cold snaps. But on the whole it hasn’t been a ‘three-woolies-and-a-vest’ type of winter as yet. That said, by the time you read this it could be sub-zero, with drifts of snow and black ice.
I grew up with snow, living as I did in Lancashire. When it snowed it stuck and when it stuck the school buses did not run. It was a four mile walk from our house to school along a winding country lane. Being on the edge of the Lancashire plain meant that the wind would blow in from the Irish Sea and whip across the flat open farm-land like a blade. If there was snow it would very soon drift on the bends in the road and make matters far worse.
‘‘Like any boy, I would seize the opportunity to skip school and snow always seemed legitimate to me’’
Of course like any boy, I would seize the opportunity to skip school and snow always seemed fairly legitimate to me, what with the eight mile round hike. Mum was having none of it and invented a rather ingenious rule. If snow stopped the school bus, I had to set off on foot. I was only allowed to turn back if and when the snow level came above the top of my wellington boots.
Now I was always a strapping great lump of a teenager with size ten feet by the time I was thirteen. Consequently, my boots were that bit taller than your average teenage lads and I would plough on into the white for longer than most kids. To be honest I was usually alone, I was the only boy from our end of the village that went to the grammar school.
Funnily enough, I never thought to tip snow into the top of my wellies and fake a snow level that merited abandoning the walk. Honestly, I could never do anything like that. I never shoplifted either – I still break out in a sweat at the very idea of it.
Of course the crisp snow at those temperatures would compact under foot and adhere itself to the sole of a rubber boot thus raising your level even further above the required line. It was a lose-lose situation. Even more so when I would trudge into the school playground only to be greeted by the headmaster waving a few vigilant boys away and declaring school closed due to adverse weather conditions. Now global warming has put pay to that, and anyway, these days most kids are ferried the short hop to their place in some fuel guzzling four-wheeled Chelsea tractor. It’s a vicious circle is it not?
