A little snow had began to fall....

[Invisible Man]

Amazing the stuff we used to get away with as kids.

Done the sledging downhill and ended up jammed under a wooden fence. Couldn't walk for a couple of days.

Done the offshore bit in a 16 feet speedboat with with a 95 hp outboard on the back that kept cutting out in a force 6 with no buoyancy aids, no other buoyancy, no flares, no radio etc. Coastguard went berserk when we finally made it to Mudeford. Something about if he had known he would have had lifeboats out and helicopters up.

Set fireworks off in Epping forest and escaped the old bill who came into the forest on noddy bikes looking for us.

Put a car on its side and spun one or 2 others.

Been stopped by the police 3 times in 8 days.

Attracted police attention when someone reported us seeing how far we could get cars to fly over a hump back bridge with long approaches.

Biggest worry now is that the grandchildren will stop playing with their PS3s and go out and be as stupid as I was at times.

.... and the kids worry because I am obese and drink something over the recommended limits.

[Frank Erskine]

Southern Jessies :-)

I remember one winter in the 50s when a bottle of milk on our doorstep froze and lifted the foil lid at least 4 or 5 inches off the bottle.

When I was a kiddy in the (19)50s summer seemed to last almost forever, with the odd torrential rainstorm (when I got lost at the beach (93 y.o. Mum still reminds me of that!)), autumn dragged on a bit as I (we) used to traipse through piles of leaves about a foot deep and winters were proper cold things which didn't seem to last all that long.

At least there was some sort of discrimination between the seasons - nowadays we have boodly cold summers and (occasional) mild winters - only yesterday I was walking the dog in a country park where it was warm, sunny and dry (but the ground was still saturated with snowmelt from the previous day).

Roll on this "global warming" we've all been promised...

Speak for yourself!

I agree though...

[Clot]

I was 13 yo at the time living in N Wales. No transport was available but walked to school through the drifts - 3 miles. Was fantastic fun. The short cut across the Golf Course was wonderful. Being a player at the time, I knew where the bunkers were. Launching yourself into those and being buried in snow was great fun.

That year, the R Conwy froze and there were iceburgs on the beach that were at least three foot thick.

An adult, up in the hills of the Conway valley built himself an igloo that he allegedly lived in for the best part of three months.

[Pete Verdon]

Not that they won't put down their PS3s and do even a little of what you did and thereby experience life first-hand?

Pete

[Clot]

As a kid in the 50s at a Victorian primary school with just a single coal fire in the class room, as a milk monitor, I regularly had to bring crates of frozen milk ( third of a pint). These had to be placed close - but not directly in front! of the fire so that they could be consumed at the morning break.

Windows regularly had frost on the inside at the beginning of the day!

Chilblains and chapped ears - I've not heard of these since I was in junior school.

But I might this weekend. I'm due to go sailing from the Hamble on Saturday! If we can get there from the Midlands this Friday p.m.

[Pete Verdon]

Humph, I dunno, and us locals on a five-year waiting list for a mooring!

Have a good one :-)

Pete

[Clot]

Thanks, I should be on a 19th century Pilot Cutter. I don't know what the creature comforts are in this weather!

Regarding access to moorings, though costs are less in N Wales, I can confirm that they are a challenge to obtain!

[Rod]

You can imagine it in today's climate - the teacher going to a different school would probably need to take their passport to prove identity.

I never had a school close due to snow during my secondary eduction. One of the advantages (or disadvantages) of a boarding school... :-)

[PeterC]

Same here (S. Northants) - 1 road out of the village wasn't cleared until into March, but we still got to school. The Headmaster used to ski in - all of 100 yards!

[PeterC]

We used to do a run that required rolling off the sledge just before a fence, then retrieving the sledge by getting down a bank to a stream.

We had the only sledge that would run on very thin snow. It was home-made (of course) and was a plank with a bit of curved-up, thin plywood on the front. Nowadays such things are bought and made of plasticrap.

[Rod]

Last time I went sledging we used fertiliser bags filled with straw and snow. Worked very well in some ways - but one person damaged her coccyx on the bumps. In considerable discomfort for many weeks.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

We (extremely rarely) got the afternoon off if the weather was particularly horrible in Aberdeen (called marking a double attendance) but never once had school cancelled. In primary, I had one teacher who lived some way outside Aberdeen - unusual in those days - who travelled by bus. If she was warned of bad weather she simply stayed with friends in town overnight to be sure of getting to work. Priorities seemed to be different in those days. She wasn't married but had an elderly mother at home.

[Clint Sharp]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Well, I wouldn't have said it was too high but obviously the computer thought it was and refused to change down. Of course, the brakes were fine and when it did change down I almost had to peel my eyeballs off the windscreen.

I mentioned it to the salesman later (it was a rather expensive Audi on loan) and he reckoned the behaviour changes depending on the gearbox mode but for the rest of the fortnight I had it, I just pootled around in auto because I didn't trust it any more.

Shame because the engine was wonderful but the car became just a mode of transport instead of a fun experience.

[Steve Walker]

When our pitches were frozen, we were sent out to play football on them, but anyone in the football team had to go in the gym instead - they didn't want to risk members of the team injuring themselves before the weekend's schools' league match!

SteveW

[Invisible Man]

When I worked in London one manager used to bring a camp bed in if he expected to have trouble getting to work the next day.

[Jules]

Ahh yeah, I remember doing that too when no 'real' sled was available. And on flattened cardboard boxes, somewhere up in the wilds of Yorkshire.

I remember my dad homebrewing a wooden sled, too - weighed a ton, all solid runners. Had a good few high-speed collisions with it, but amazingly never managed to break any skulls. Eventually got sick of hauling the bloody thing back up the hill each time, and we got a plastic sledge (albeit one which I remember as being far more sturdy than the ones they sell these days).

We've got three kids though and I've since discovered that inflatable tubes are *way* faster down a hill than a wooden or plastic sled (but the crashes aren't quite as fun ;-)

cheers

Jules

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Wonder if this was a DSG box? Those are a sort of manual synchromesh box controlled by servos - as is the conventional clutch. Very simply. The Steptronic doesn't wait for the speed to be reduced to select the gear you want - it either does or refuses so you have to try again at a lower speed. But pretty well never jerks on a change - even manual ones.

I hardly ever use the manual selection. The gearbox ECU 'learns' your driving style and adjusts things to suit. If driving hard and accelerating out of a corner, say, then lift off and brake for the next one it will stay in the lower gear. It also changes down going down hill to save the brakes. Ie, if it starts to run away on a trailing throttle downhill and you touch the brakes, it changes down. Weird first time it happens.

Perhaps more experience of it might have helped - if you weren't used to modern autos? The latest versions of these twin clutch synchromesh autos are pretty good. As are conventional ones.

[Dave Liquorice]

No.1 Daughter had chillblains last year. But then she did insist on going to school in her normal thin socks and shoes not wellies with and thick socks and she would be outside at breaks and lunch like that. She has learnt...

[Dave Liquorice]

There's always one. B-)

Center weighted auto on the camera. At least I set it to "shade", the auto white balance gets *very* confused with sunlit snow and makes everything very blue.

Note also that there is quite a texture on the snow surface and the sun angle is quite low so there is a lot of shadow on the surfaces. The images are a pretty good representation of reality. Anyway looked at 'em again and I agree they were a bit down. Stretched them out a bit now. Also some more at:

appreicable thaw of Monday/Tuesdays snow. -8.0C min last night, -7.3C the night before. Yesterdays max 1.2C and above freezing for less than

2hrs. Currently -1.9C no wind clear bright and sunny again, really does look beautiful. Another dusting over night, about 5mm of very fine dry powder.

[Rod]

That link didn't work... :-(

Trouble is, (as you know) *any* overexposure kills the picture and you can't do much about it. Slight-to-moderate underexposure usually allows a bit of manipulation. Learned all about that from white mushrooms...