'COLD IN THE HOUSE...' BEING COLD IN 1960s BIRMINGHAM...

Cold In The House…

Lumps of black coal, dusted with slack

Were shovelled into a metal pail

And placed precisely between the firebricks charred,

To fuel the living-room fire…

No other heating supplemented this source,

Cold rooms one’s joints assailed

And the child’s chilled body shivered and jarred,

The clamour for warmth intensely dire…

Upstairs I rushed,

I urinated

Then cleaned my teeth,

The undressing hushed.

Sheets climbed beneath,

Water-bottle’s heat

Anticipated:

Desperately I huddled,

My icy feet

Incapacitated

And my mind befuddled…

Sheets of white linen encrusted by cold,

Soon pinched my skin and railed;

Catching me completely unprepared,

Almost too much for a kid to bear…

Yet on alternate weeks, flustered by joy,

Flannelette sheets were hailed;

Their smooth and snuggly comfort shared

But that pleasure for me was too rare…

Pete Ray

December 2016

Going to bed in Shard End, Birmingham around 1960.

One coal fire, no other heating. 

No wonder I was a rapid runner, for sprinting upstairs two at a time to thrash my clothes off and pull on the evil, if mildly helpful pyjamas, certainly kept me fit.

If the horrendous linen sheets were on my bed in the winter, even the hot water bottle struggled to prevent the shivering but those flannelette sheets… Wow…