Clearing a path

Bought a broom and a spade to clear the snow and ice from my new back yard today. Over the weekend when the big move takes place some stuff needs to be stored in the outhouses at the back and there was about six inches of snow in the way. I 'set to' outside the back door working towards the gate, shovelling the worst of it away and then attacking the remainder with the broom.

After a couple of minutes something 'clicked' in my mind and I realised that all this activity was unleashing some very deeply buried childhood memories. This is EXACTLY what my grandad used to do first thing in the mornings in our back yard in Barnard Castle if there had been snow overnight back in the mid nineteen-fifties. It was an important little winter routine for two reasons. Firstly our only toilet was at the bottom of the yard, and we didn't want to be wading through snow to get down there. If it had been a particularly cold east wind overnight there might be a quarter of inch of ice there to chip away at before 'normal service' could be resumed, and in the depths of winter a paraffin 'tilly lamp' was kept burning there so that the pipes to the lavatory cistern didn't freeze up and burst. Going to the loo could be a darn chilly experience.

Then, next to the toilet, was the coal shed. This was nearest the back gate and there was a little cupboard-like door leading to the lane through which the coal man could empty his sacks if nobody was home. Not that my grandmother would ever have trusted the coalman to deliver full measure unsupervised, those sacks were always counted in under her eagle eye! A new scuttle of coal would be needed to light the fire each morning and you didn't want to be slithering around with a heavy bucket of coal on ice and snow.

Well, in my house there is no outdoor toilet or coal shed any more but the layout is just the same and that was where I was shovelling my way to.

Rev. Mugo was helping me out today with some decorating and balanced on her steps in the back living room where she was busily applying emulsion paint to the walls she could see my progress down the yard with shovel and broom. Later she commented that when I paused and looked around it seemed like I was remembering something.

She was right!