Dave Mundy
The fog and frost outside my house tonight (December 2016) reminds me of when I was a tall 14 year old going to see an ‘X’ film, ‘The Thing’, at the local flea-pit cinema, and coming out into such a night. Every alleyway I passed I expected the vegetable monster to grab me, boy how I hurried home! Happy, but scary, days!
Mike Giles
I recall a winter when I was about fifteen down in the West Country, so 1960/1961 – ish, when we had freezing fog for a couple of weeks, I fancy, and the frost on the trees got so thick that boughs were almost scraping the ground and quite a few limbs snapped off altogether (tree limbs, that is, leaving just the one!).
Dave Mundy
As for icicles, I remember in the great winter of 1947, when the snow reached the top of our garden gate, we saw icicles from the gutter of the local cow shed reaching the ground! But it was the best ever winter for sledging in the back field where the farmers’ boys had made a local ‘Cresta Run’ – fantastic fun, but ,oh, the chilblains and ‘Snowfire’ ointment to cure them! Followed by ‘The Magic Box’ on Children’s Hour’ – magical times which today’s smartphone kids will never understand, or enjoy!
Mike Jordan
I remember the fogs (smogs) in the early 1950s (caused mainly by pollution not weather) when, unlike today, all the schools – including our Primary – were kept open, and we simply walked down to school feeling our way along the familiar fences and hedges and, of course, there were hardly any cars on the roads anyway.
Dave Plowman
The winter of 1962/1963 was particularly bad. I remember it as my first in London having just started at TC. Living in a bedsit in Chiswick and having to feed the meter for the gas fire. Quite a surprise how much such things cost after living at home.
Alec Bray
January 1963 and I had just started work at the BBC – all excited. I was still living (OK, at home) in Reading, and used to catch the train from Reading General to Paddington, then onto the Hot and Cold (“Hammersmith and City” , at that time called the “Metropolitan”) round to Shepherds Bush. And then in the evening, shivering on the platform at Shepherds Bush to be trundled to Paddington to catch a train home. Yes, I knew all the late night trains from Paddington.
One particular day I managed to get to Reading Station – after having to stop my little A30 a number of times to clear the windscreen – and waited for the train to come in. The handles of the carriage doors were thick with ice – really thick – the train had been travelling through freezing fog. There was ice everywhere. It was a real struggle to open the doors. Somehow we managed it and scrambled aboard.
What to wear on TV
Peter Combes
The story is that in chilly Alexandra Palace, the female announcers wore glamorous tops over warm trousers. Is there any photographic evidence for this?
