Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Snow in Harringay
I'm just about old enough to remember the winter of 1962/63 in Harringay. One of the longest and coldest winters on record in the U.K. when even 'the sea' began to freeze.
Many parts of Tottenham, had no running water for weeks and water had to be collected from stand pipes outside. There were also periods with no electricity and gas pressure went down. The majority of the Victorian housing stock in the Borough still had no double glazing, as well as outside toilets and many of these froze up too!
School (Woodlands Park) carried on normally as far as I can remember (we all walked to school in those days).
After the thaw, enormous damage had been done by the snow and ice to road surfaces and I remember that Black Boy Lane had to be completely dug up and relaid later in 1963.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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1962/3 Pah !
1947, now THAT was a winter. INSIDE toilets froze up :-)
One of the things that I miss in our cosy modern existence is those lovely ferny frost patterns on the inside of windows.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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@John can you really remember that far back? I wouldn't have noticed - thought you were about my age..
Miss frost patterns? - then buy a caravan..! :o)
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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Right, John. That's the one, though it didn't hit us till well after Christmas. I'd just started school a few months earlier, younger than I needed to so I was in "Wee Infants". With snow drifts up to the eaves the neighbouring men would go from house to house across the fields digging snow tunnels. (Yeah, the Big Society!) No heating of course and coal almost impossible to get, turf fire blinding us with smoke as the turf stack in the haggard was sodden wet. When the snow finally melted, the turf bog was flooded right into the summer.
Toilets - inside or outside? What are they? What's a haggard for after all - but that too needed snow tunnelling.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Winter 1947? Yes, they told us about that one at school. Sounded horrendous.
Apparently milk froze and every house had icicles under the eves. A woman called Marian got frostbite on her nose and a shepherd named Dick narrowly escaped losing his fingers.
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Alan, if we'd only had a hall Tom could have brought us some logs - if the bloody landlords hadn't deforested us three centuries earlier.
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Ah, but have you tasted Joan's delicious pot noodles? (All fat removed.)
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You may have answered my 55-year old query about keeling the pot. My teacher at the time guessed 'cool'. I think he was a chancer.
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Oh, dear. I got this wrong. My apologies. (And to your teacher.) I'd long assumed Joan was just skimming the scum and excess grease. (Hence her nickname.) But the OED confirms your teacher wasn't guessing.
Joan was indeed cooling the pot to stop it boiling over. Probably by ladling in some cold water. This from the Online Oxford English Dictionary.
c1384 Bible (Wycliffite, E.V.) (Douce 369(2)) (1850) Luke xvi. 24
Send Lazarus, that he dippe the laste part of his fyngur in watir, and kele my tunge.Of course, had the pot boiled over, the fat would have been - literally - in the fire and wasted. So Joan would probably have skimmed it off and saved it.1393 Langland Piers Plowman C. xxii. 280 And lerede men a ladel bygge with a long stele, That cast for to kele a crokke and saue þe fatte aboue.¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
(O.E.D. Courtesy of Haringey Libraries. Use it now before Mr Osborne's wrecking ball arrives.)
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Brilliant, Alan. And yes my abject apologies too to Fr Cornelius Curtin (still living, well into his 90s in a Dublin retirement home). He would be tickled to know that you backed him up with Wycliff's Bible and Piers Plowman.
And right, it's time we took your hints and began to use our Haringey Library ticket to real purpose.
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This Fr Curtin, are the vatican police aware of all these tickling episodes ?
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"It depends what you mean by" tickling, James. No, Fr C concentrated on tickling our brains only. e.g. once a week he hauled along his huge reel-to-reel tape recorder and subjected our little minds to the latest 'Brains Trust' from the Third Service. Then half a dozen of us had to try to outdo the BBC lot. He always said they'd gone downhill since they dropped Prof Joad.
Now, what's all this to do with 'Snow in Harringay'? Ah, C.P. Snow - two cultures and all that?
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