Snow - Fun in Padfield

It snowed yesterday. Just a tiny bit. Enough for my grandson to notice and tell me and sure enough, there was a flurry. We watched through the back room window, taking a break – I should say another break – from my efforts to home school him. Some snowflakes were big, but they didn’t hang around. The sun came out again, the sky was blue, and the last snowflake melted on the window and rolled down like a big tear-drop.  My grandson isn’t bothered. They’re not used to snow. He didn’t want to go out in it the other day when we had a depth of half a centimetre. He’d rather stay in and keep warm, but as he had walked round in his wellies I thought he might be hopeful of us quickly fashioning a tiny snow person in my back garden.

We hardly ever get proper snow here on the coast. I think it was 1981 when I trudged home from a nearby friend’s house in borrowed wellies which just about protected me, so deep was the snowfall that took us all by surprise when we opened the door. Luckily, as we were planning on staying in, I had walked. Usually I would take my car expecting us to be going off somewhere. The snow lasted a few days. Telephones were not working. I couldn’t get a message to work, but it didn’t matter, no one else made it in. There were a couple of times in the ‘90s when school was closed due to snow and my children played out in it. Very rare. It’s different further inland.

Padfield School 

During my childhood, for a short time we lived in Padfield, a village near Glossop in the Peak District. My parents were managing the local pub / small hotel, The Peels Arms, still there and it’s a great place, by the way. I made lots of friends at the village school and had a party for my ninth birthday in the hotel dining room. It was a very quiet neighbourhood and not many cars in those days. We had previously lived in pubs on busy streets or in town centres so being allowed out to play was a first for me and I loved it. Once, and it was only ever the once for reasons you’ll understand, I was allowed to take my toddler sister out in her pushchair. I took her to the nearby playground where she watched me play on the swings and roundabout with my friends. I must have got distracted. I don’t know the length of time involved, but at some point back at home, someone asked, ‘Where’s Anne?’ and the realisation hit me. I’d left her at the park.  She was still there, safe and well and I expect she was happy that someone came to rescue her. I was in the biggest trouble.

It snowed that winter, as it does every winter up there, and we were cut off. It must have been after Christmas because I remember sitting  by the fire in the ‘snug’ bar making the baskets from the gift of a basket weaving set I had received. No one could get in or out of Padfield.  Everything carried on as normal. The school had four classes with three teachers. Standard One and Standard Two shared a classroom with one teacher and all the staff lived locally. Snowy schooldays were fun, messing about all the way there and all the way back. The problem was that deliveries couldn’t get in, so provisions at the shop ran low or eventually ran out. I remember my mother helping out with food from the hotel to whoever needed it.

If the travel news on the radio gives information about the Snake Pass or Woodhead Road being closed due to snow, I know that Padfield and possibly Hadfield are cut off. I think back on my time there with fondness – apart from the incident with my sister – some great memories.

Padfield in the Snow
A snowman stood by every gate
Watching us marching down to school.
“Hurry up, we’re gonna be late,
Last one in is Mrs Swift’s fool!”

It’s hard to rush in such deep snow
With a blizzard freezing your face,
Making snowballs ready to throw
At some mates, nearly keeping pace.

Mrs Swift is standing, waiting,
About to close the classroom door,
Watching us dripping, creating
The puddles on the wooden floor.

Her eyes are narrow, looking cross.
Above her glasses, angry frown,
No doubt to nine-year olds who’s boss,
“Come in quickly and settle down!”

Prayers, assembly and work to do.
Writing and reading and hard sums,
Then we’re painting in shades of blue.
At home time, some letters for mums.

More snowball fighting up the street,
Climb the hill, laughing and falling,
Icy fingers and frozen feet,
“Pamela, your mum is calling!”


PMW 2021

Thanks for reading, stay safe and keep well, Pam x

The photo is Padfield School, not mine.

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Upheaval - Moving House

My father’s job meant that we moved house a lot in my younger days. Sometimes, to me, it seemed like we had just got settled and we were off again. This transient lifestyle took us from pub to pub, or pub / restaurant or residential hotel and on one rare occasion to our own private house when he worked for Scottish & Newcastle looking after several premises. I can’t remember the layout of our living accommodation everywhere, I only remember the adventures of exploring our new home and whether or not I had to share a bedroom with my younger sister. Some places were vast, others were pokey and hotels usually meant no kitchen to call our own and bedrooms down a faraway corridor with views out on to a scruffy yard or a brick wall. Sometimes we didn’t need our own furniture and kitchen things. It would all be stored away in a spare room, ready packed for the next move. More than always being ‘the new girl’ at school, making new friends and meeting new staff, my ever lasting memory is the upheaval of  relocating.

In later years, I loved the independence of buying my own house, just mine. It was compact, tiny, even, and not perhaps in a favoured area, but it was my home and I loved it. How I managed to collect so many belongings and squeeze them in to my two-up-two-down, I can’t imagine now, but when my husband and I were planning our wedding and starting to move my things into our house, what an upheaval that was. I declared then that I was never going to move again, ever. Up to now, we haven’t, but if someone handed us the keys to a delightful bungalow in Kirkcudbright, I would cope.

Recently, my father-in-law moved into permanent residential care. Our family have been busy emptying his house of a lifetime of stuff which he doesn’t need anymore. In a way it seems wrong to be sorting out his belongings and making decisions on his behalf, but it’s the way it has to be and it’s a job which is certainly better to be done by his family rather than a house-clearance firm.

Again, it’s an upheaval but it will soon be done and in all the sorting out, there was family treasure to be found. An anthology of children’s poetry which includes a poem by his late grandson, David, aged eleven.

 

     Split Worlds

Eyes large with colours of the town.

Looking up, looking down.

Arm trying to grab a drink.

Fist ready to punch, angry. 

Body in purple.

Body in orange.

Split personality.

Red city, yellow lights.

In the blackness of the sky.

Confusion like the litter.

The world is drunk inside. 

I drink some more.

I have a fag and drop to the floor. 

David Winning (1982 – 2009)

 

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x        

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Herbs and Spices - Scarborough Fair

Such beautiful, natural, autumnal colours when spices are placed together on the photo I’ve chosen. I confess, I’m not a very adventurous cook. I like to try new recipes and I don’t shy away from herbs and spices if required, but mostly I’m aiming to serve nutritional, healthy food as quickly as possible. It’s that work-life balance thing that I never seem to get right.

In the early 70s, dining out for me was usually at a popular Italian restaurant where I would be wary of eating anything with ‘bits’ on. Little has changed just a different Italian restaurant and I’m fine with herbs now. I no longer think that ground black pepper is the most exotic condiment and if I’m cooking Italian I add plenty of basil, oregano and marjoram. A homemade quiche always has a liberal sprinkling of tarragon.

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. I drove everyone mad with my rendition of ‘Scarborough Fair’ and I think they were relieved when a couple of snapped guitar strings meant I could no longer pick out the chords on the cheap ‘made for tourists’ instrument I bought from a local market in Palma Nova. I was enjoying my first trip to Majorca and musical by nature, I’d picked up on the Spanish guitar sound from the trio of players that provided evening entertainment in our hotel. I soon gave up trying to copy them and instead concentrated on ‘Scarborough Fair’ from the Simon and Garfunkel cassette that was part of my birthday present. My main present was a Sony portable cassette player, before the days of the Walkman and long before CDs. Nearly every Simon and Garfunkel song brings back memories of that first of many holidays and birthdays in Majorca; the fresh, sweet fragrance of the hotel, the tapping of my sandals on the marble effect flooring, the lights along the coast-line seen from our balcony and yes, the unfortunate episode with Bacardi and Coke as mentioned in last week’s blog.  I don’t think I’m responsible for setting a trend. Majorca was becoming a popular holiday island as going abroad was easily accessible in the mid 60s. I haven’t been for decades and probably wouldn’t recognise Palma Nova or Magaluf anymore. ‘Scarborough Fair’ will always be special and I apologise to anyone who had a room close to mine at the time.

 

I found this,

 

John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864)

          And where the marjoram once, and sage, and rue,

And balm, and mint, with curl’d-leaf parsley grew,

And double marigolds, and silver thyme,

And pumpkins ‘neath the window climb;

And where I often, when a child, for hours

Tried through the pales to get the tempting flowers,

As lady’s laces, everlasting peas,

True-love-lies-bleeding, with the hearts-at-ease,

And golden rods, and tansy running high,

That o’er the pale-tops smiled on passers-by.

 

Thanks for reading.

I'm off on my travels and will be back in a few weeks. Pam xx

 

 

 

 

 

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