Anyone remember the snow in 1947? Our readers do...
I love it when a real theme starts in readers' letters.
The latest is snorts of disgust from those aged around 70 at our reaction to recent snow.
And after the first letter published 10 days ago, a trickle of the same theme turned into a glut of folk who all started remembering the year 1947 in detail.
Anyone out there with parents/grandparents old enough, just ask them about that year's snowfall.
According to more than a dozen letter writers so far, we've had nothing but flurries in the UK this month compared to way back then.
Several feet of snow for several days; kids trudging to school throughout; warmed up with cocoa and wearing coats, scarves and hats all day; clearing the shopfronts for a tanner; all hands on deck for field-shovelling to aid local farmers.
None of those writing with memories can understand why a little snow paralyses Britain today.
Not a day's education or work missed by anyone (though surely there's a few rose-tinted glasses here...)
Although there's been snow letters every day since, I think the repetition of memories from this day deserves another wipe out letters section later this week.
REMINDER TO SELF: get the library to find classic 1947 Brum snow pic for above.
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Steve Dyson - Blog from the Editor on recent issues and events.
I'm very skeptical about the 1947 memories. We are talking more than 60 years ago, so people of 70-odd would have been 10 at the time. How much do you really remember from when you are 10, other than your own little world of school and friends?
You might remember people helping each other out, and trudging to school, but that these people can say they remember that no one lost a day's work sounds suspiciously like a made-up memory to me.
Snow aside, everyone seems to reckon things were better before now in nearly every situation.
Hi folks,
I was born in 1943 so I was 4 and a bit when the snow came, but I can remember it. However I admit I can only remember the stuff that was interesting to a 4 year old. My dad built an enormous snowman in our garden with a top hat, scarf, pieces of coal as buttons up his front and for his eyes and mouth the same. I remember we rushed out every morning to see if he was still there, I think because dad said he would get smaller and smaller until he disappeared. I do remember he stayed for a long time, until one day the snow started to slide off the roofs and our snowman did start to get smaller and smaller each day.
I remember how happy I was when it snowed on my 5th birthday in January 1947. My mom wasn't so happy as the kids coming to my birthday party tramped snow into our house. She said, "At least the snow will be gone by your sister's birthday." But when my sister's birthday arrived, on March 21, the snow was still on the ground.
those days in 1947 we had a tram service that used snow ploughs on the front of them and most people did get to work and school