‘Ice Melt’
As I get older I find myself getting much more nostalgic and enjoying reminiscing. Whilst working on this oil painting in the studio I found myself remembering when I was a tiny tot way back in the long, hard winter of 1963.
I was in the infant class and each day for weeks we faced a long trek through the snow to school and back. The snow went way over the top of my wellington boots so they never seemed to dry out before the next time I had to wear them. My legs were permanently chapped, but that snow was so beautiful, and such fun to play in, we children hardly seemed to notice all the discomfort of permanently soggy wellies and gloves!
If I was lucky one of our teachers, who lived near me, would give me a ride home after school in her bubble car. I don’t think bubble cars were really designed to drive on snow and ice, but I would squeeze into that tine car with Mrs B and all her teacher’s paraphernalia and we would very slowly make our slippery way from one end of the village to the next. It very probably would have been safer to make the one mile journey on foot through the thick snow, but I can’t tell you what fun it was, sliding gracefully and slightly sideways, on the icy road, whilst somehow avoiding all the snowdrifts which were built up on both sides - it felt like a slow motion version of the Cresta Run!
Once safely back at home Mum gave my sister and I hot drinks to thaw us out and we settled down to toast cooked in front of the blazing fire in the tiny front room, which was wonderfully cosy on a cold winter’s afternoon. There is really nothing quite like the taste of a piece of bread which has been placed on a toasting fork and presented to the flames until it browns, and then buttered liberally and eaten hot.
It was a hard winter and must have been so hard for the adults, but for us children it was quite magical.
This painting will be on display as part of an exhibition at West Ox Arts Gallery in Bampton, Oxfordshire, from 9th November to 23rd December.
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