We often had natural creamy ice-cream in the 1940s winters.
In 1941 there was snow near Bygate School, Monkseaton, higher than I was tall. One Sunday a policeman came knocking on the doors asking all the men to bring spades to clear Seatonville Road to let the traffic resume. It was 3 to 4 feet deep in snow and totally blocked from Burnthouse Lane to the Foxhunters.
The previous Friday night the railway was blocked and shut, so my Father got a lift on a milk cart from Walker nearly to Shields and walked the rest of the way home through drifting snow. Some Pennine railways were blocked for days. The crews dropped the loco’s fires on the tracks, and everybody had to get shelter where they could. London ran short of milk. The milk here froze in the bottles and pushed the lids off. It was great – we often had natural creamy ice cream in the 1940’s winters.
Our copper hot water cylinder blew up due to the supply pipe freezing up one Christmas Eve; a muffled ‘crump’ noise and water all over the bathroom floor, the fire’s back boiler broke also – sooty water on the carpet, Mother “did her nut”.