Too Cossetted for our Own Good?

Brrrr! at the moment, although we have a grand sunny day outside, it's cold, and I do mean cold. The temperature is around -2 or -3 and the frost stays around for most of the day. Hang on a minute! 'I thought you said it was really cold', I can hear some of you thinking. Well, by today's standards it's far colder than we have become used to.

Yet, you know dear reader, when I think back to my 'growing years' we really did have cold winters. It was fairly normal for us to go through the winter with the inevitable 'dew-drop' on the end of our frozen noses, and slabs of ice for hands and feet. Waking up in the morning our beds were inviting us to stay, not because we were too lazy to get up but because we could see the patterns of the ice on the inside of our bedroom windows. No jumping out onto warm carpets either for us; we stepped out onto cold linoleum with the benefit of a small rug if we were lucky.

Looking out from the window --- my bedroom was on the third floor of a large house which had three floors and a cellar --- I looked out across the gardens to a paddock and wood, all of which would be covered either in snow or a heavy hoare frost. Now, if you've never experienced a real hoare frost before --- and I suppose there are those who haven't --- then it's a wonderful sight to see. However it's cold to experience as well. I've posted a picture at the top to show you what it can be like at it's most beautiful.

The problem for today's generation in the UK, is that they have never really experienced a really cold winter. That means that they don't know what it's like to wake up to snow morning after morning for weeks, sometimes so deep that it has drifted half-way up the lower levels of the house, and possibly six feet deep in the lanes outside. Of course, when it was snowy it actually felt warmer than when the frost was there. Of course, going to school was an adventure too, as we wondered if the bus would skid, and we got to school late because of going slowly. Then there were the icy pavements; deep ruts of ice that attempted to trip you up as you crunched your way through them.

For many years now we have experienced much milder winters, so much so that when the temperatures drops a few degrees people talk about it 'plummeting' downwards. I wonder if we have become too cossetted in our centrally heated homes and warm cars? Certainly, when it comes to the subject of church attendance, i question why people would willingly leave their warm home and travel to the church in a well-heated car, in order to sit on a hard pew in a poorly heated building. Some churches are so cold that it seems that it would be warmer to sit in a refrigerator! The problem is that the design of the building so often means that it's almost impossible to heat well, particularly when you consider that the church may only be used for an hour on the Sunday morning and another hour in the evening. It's simply not cost effective to heat all that space to comfort level for such a short time, especially when you consider that it means that the heating needs often to be left on for eighteen hours or so beforehand as well as between the two services.

Nice memories in many ways, but oh! how I enjoy the benefits of central heating!