Snow days

[Hertsscot]

Apart from Scotland's men qualifying for major competition for the first time in over 20 years it has been a pretty rubbish year for the obvious reasons.  Just to add to the doom and gloom I'm highlighting another casualty whose demise has not yet been fully recognized or acknowledged or mourned - the snow day.

Both as a pupil and then a member of staff you used to get excited looking at the weather forecast, then going to bed with an almost pre-Christmas Day fervour of expectation thinking tomorrow it could be a snow day.  In the morning you'd wake up see a blanket of snow and pray that the headteacher would have the common sense to abandon any thought of staff or pupils trekking in like Amundsen and his huskies just to learn about algebra or growing ground nuts in West Africa.

Snow days were few and far between in Essex/Herts but they were glorious days, you had an unexpected bonus holiday, go sledging, build a snowman, have a snowball fight, put on the mulled wine which you hadn't drunk at Christmas because it was too balmy outside (that's as an adult rather than as a kid!) etc.

I shall miss snowdays, they were memorable.  Sadly now if schools are shut because of snow all pupils and staff can look forward to is sitting in front of a computer screen all day and doing work on microsoft teams rather than enjoying the wonder of a winter wonderland.  I shall miss snow days and am grateful that I'm of a generation that had the fortune  to experience them.

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by Hertsscot

[Fish Supper]

Never had snow days in Ayrshire when i was a kid. It was get to school or else!

[Huddersfield]

It was the same here. Different time I know but I grew up on the edge of the Pennines & we’d always get one or two heavy falls a year at least. My dad worked in a factory across town & just wouldn’t have got paid if he didn’t get there.

I can’t ever remember the buses not running & that’s up & down some bloody steep hills  I’m sure it probably wasn’t quite as rose-tinted as I remember it but I’m sure the general attitude was shrugging the shoulders not world falling apart.

My only memory of the snow causing me any real problems was when I couldn’t get into town in time to catch the coach for Portsmouth away one year & lost the £5 I’d paid. And we won, which we never bloody well did down there.

A snow day at school meant sorting out the big snowball fight between the secondary school & 6th form college next door. Most of us wanted to get to school those days more than any other. 

Cut & pasted from my post on grumpyoldgimmers.com.

[Orraloon]

43 minutes ago, Fish Supper said:

Never had snow days in Ayrshire when i was a kid. It was get to school or else!

Never existed where I was either. Must be a southern softy thing? I can vividly remember trudging through snow a foot deep, which was even harder when I was only 4 foot tall. Had to be pretty horrendous condition to stop us getting to school. And if you didn't make it your were marked down as absent. Nowadays, we get half an inch of snow and everything grinds to a standstill.

[dan cake]

My employer decided to dock wages of those who never came to work on police advice during the “beast from the east”, a few flakes and everybody just phones in sick now.

[Hertsscot]

2 hours ago, Orraloon said:

Never existed where I was either. Must be a southern softy thing? I can vividly remember trudging through snow a foot deep, which was even harder when I was only 4 foot tall. Had to be pretty horrendous condition to stop us getting to school. And if you didn't make it your were marked down as absent. Nowadays, we get half an inch of snow and everything grinds to a standstill.

May well be a southern softie thing. Previous school was fairly rural so lots of students bussed in. Present school is in a bigger town and on a  main road so I waved good bye to snow days when I moved. Would have to be Snowmageddon for us to close.

[TDYER63]

I dont specifically remember getting time off school due to snow either, I am probably ages with auld man Orraloon. But I do remember throngs of kids congregating at the top of a wide steep hill which had metal railings at the bottom . There would be umpteen slides on the hill , many of them so icy it was like glass . If you couldnt stop yourself at the bottom you crashed into the railings which was pretty dangerous. 
I was a big fearty and went down the slides on my arse rather than stand. I got home one night and it was totally numb with the cold. When i warmed up my backside was throbbing like hell. I had literally taken the top layer of skin off . I couldnt sit down properly for days . 

Those were the days..  

 

[Fish Supper]

18 minutes ago, TDYER63 said:

I dont specifically remember getting time off school due to snow either, I am probably ages with auld man Orraloon. But I do remember throngs of kids congregating at the top of a wide steep hill which had metal railings at the bottom . There would be umpteen slides on the hill , many of them so icy it was like glass . If you couldnt stop yourself at the bottom you crashed into the railings which was pretty dangerous. 
I was a big fearty and went down the slides on my arse rather than stand. I got home one night and it was totally numb with the cold. When i warmed up my backside was throbbing like hell. I had literally taken the top layer of skin off . I couldnt sit down properly for days . 

Those were the days..  

 

😂, ha ha, aye i can remember making slides on the pavement on our scheme to see who could slide the farthest, then everyone would come out the houses and fall flat on their arses.

[TDYER63]

6 minutes ago, Fish Supper said:

😂, ha ha, aye i can remember making slides on the pavement on our scheme to see who could slide the farthest, then everyone would come out the houses and fall flat on their arses.

😂

I remember old women coming out their front doors,  tip toeing with their wee furry boots which had socks pulled over the top of them, and gripping onto their fences for dear life and cursing as the pavements were so icy with weans making slides. They were petrified they would fall. Poor souls. 

I am now that old woman and its not so funny  ! 

[Lairdyfaeinverclyde]

I still have the scars from a snow day from primary school. We had a big hill in Greenock that was used by loads of kids to slide down. A couple of us found a sheet of corrigated iron and bent the front up, our version of a bobsleigh? I was at the front stupidly holding on to the front. We didn't stop as planned and smashed in to a wall. The pads on my left hand fingers got ripped of. Lesson learned, i wasn't cut (no pun intended) out for winter sports.

[bonzo]

I think a few of us are a similar age? I do remember getting sent home from primary school in the early 70s because we ran out of coal (strike I think) and couldn't heat the place. 

We lived in a scheme and our idea of a winter sport was when the roads were packed down with snow we'd wait for the icecream van and grab onto the rear bumper hunker down and let it drag us along the snow/ice, we called this a wee man.

Making big slides was great, we'd fling down pans of water, go and play chappie for 1/2 an hour and it was ready to use (unless some auld bidy had salted it before you returned).

[prideothenorth]

It was relatively unheard of any schools in Aberdeen to close back in the 70s and we were so used to going to school in the snow we thought nothing of it. Our mother just told us to get our wellies on and off we went. 

Only a few kids had a sledge so we used to break up a cardboard box and sit on it for sliding down the hills. 

Such a shame you hardly ever see kids playing in the snow or sledging nowadays.

[Grim Jim]

6 hours ago, TDYER63 said:

😂

I remember old women coming out their front doors,  tip toeing with their wee furry boots which had socks pulled over the top of them, and gripping onto their fences for dear life and cursing as the pavements were so icy with weans making slides. They were petrified they would fall. Poor souls. 

I am now that old woman and its not so funny  ! 

[wheres the pies]

[bonzo]

1 hour ago, Grim Jim said:

@dandydunn?

[dandydunn]

38 minutes ago, bonzo said:

@dandydunn?

If they’re not adidas, they’re not mine.....

[bonzo]

1 hour ago, dandydunn said:

If they’re not adidas, they’re not mine.....

😆