Bleak Midwinter

Today

As usual, the cold has affected Stoke St Michael more than the surrounding towns and villages. I walked up to the shop yesterday and managed to avoid the slidey bits. There was ice in the puddles, though, and this morning is dry and frosty.

In My Day

Our personal name for the event I'm about to describe is "The Great Ice". The year was 1995. Mum was spending Christmas with us and the weather was dry and very cold. The effect of this was to chill the ground deeply.

On 30th December we awoke to a gentle rain. "Oh good!" I thought "That means it'll be warmer." What it actually meant was that the gentle drizzle froze on contact with the cold ground and a layer of clear ice formed over everything. Liz and I tried to break up the ice on the front step, first with salt and then with shovels. but we couldn't shift it.

Now, we had a much looked-forward to invitation to spend the afternoon with our friends in Shepton Mallet. Liz shrieked at me "We can't go out! everyone in Shepton has already got broken legs from the ice!" Hmmm. I weighed everything up. Paul was game, we wanted to see our friends and Mum was all dressed up and ready to go. We slithered out to the car which was coated in the same sheet ice as everything else. Quite pretty, really.

Somehow he got up the close and we drove carefully to Shepton. We stumbled up our friends' steep drive, half carrying Tricia, and had a jolly good afternoon. I went out several time to see how the weather was doing. It didn't improve and, when I saw that a light fog was descending I decided it was time to go.

We arrived back at the Close which is quite a steep little road, facing North. As we started down it, I spoke, sotto voce to Paul. "will you be able to stop?" "I don't know; I tried the brakes and nothing happened." "How about using reverse gear?" I muttered. "It may come to that!"

It is a massive tribute to Paul's driving skills that he succeeded in steering the car into the turning bay and reversing successfully up our iced-over narrow driveway. And we all got indoors without broken legs.

We later heard that this weather event had affected most of Southern Britain and that many people did, indeed, suffer broken limbs.

The Met Office warns people not make unnecessary journeys, but of course we all have our own ideas about "unnecessary".