I remember that winter - 3 day week, power cuts half the week and still the damn school stayed open!! I remember going TO school in darkness at 8.45am one day, and coming home at 3.30 pm still in darkness....

We had coal fires anyway, those in town who had central heating (a rare and wondrous thing in those days....) froze! I remember spending the Christmas holidays with my grandfather, whose fireplace in the farmhouse he lived in, was bigger than my daughter's bedroom now!! It housed an old fashioned wood burning range and the biggest leather armchair - big enough for 3 kids, 2 cats and a teddybear. Ahhhh....

LTS