We've all gone soft!

Have we all gone so soft these days that we can't cope with a little adverse weather?

My memory of schooldays in the '60s and '70s includes a good few inches of snow almost every winter and no missed days due to schools being closed. Alright, so I just missed the the big freeze of '63, although I do remember moving house one day in April accompanied by snow. And that stopped neither the pantechnicon with our furniture, nor my father's Ford Thames van with an old sofa in the back for my older brother and I to sit on, getting through. And that sofa wasn't furniture — it was the back seat and it wasn't even tied down!

The only difference that snow ever made, was that if it was more than two inches deep, I didn't have to line up with all my classmates and walk the daily half mile from my infants school to to the nearby primary school which had the luxury of kitchens and a hall to eat in.

Instead, vats of steaming glop were brought to us. I could never work out why it was that they couldn't do that every day since the vats and transport were clearly available!

Having said that, I was glad that modern technology meant that I didn't have to go out in the cold, struggle to central London, and then leave after only a few hours in the editorial office to struggle back home again

Instead, I stayed in the warm, worked online in regular contact with similarly stranded colleagues and those who did fight their way in, and had a chance to see my daughters and a grand-daughter build a snowman in my garden that was rather larger than the 6-incher that graced my front-drive a few years ago. After that I set one of the girls to work on some firewood with a chainsaw.

And before you elfin safety types object, she's 29-years old, is training in outdoor estate management and had all the safety gear that I wouldn't have bothered with. Mind you, I didn't watch because she's didn't earn the nickname "butterflies n squirrels" while at university for nothing.

Mike Thompson