Half Brit Half Innuit
resisting the temptation to just add a pearoast from last week... www.b3ta.com/questions/fittingin/post349568

I offer this..


Back in the early 1980s we had proper winters. Oh yes we did! there was (unusually for the UK midlands) about half a yard/metre of lying snow on the ground for three weeks, it was added to by fresh stuff every day, it seemed. So on the last Friday of term, I was sitting in English class, being taught by the God of Sarcasm, Ian Roberts* along with the usual daft mates, all of us gazing out of the window at yet more of the lovely cold white stuff falling out of the sky.
"Sparkie! Have you and your coven finished that?" Asked Mr R

"Errm ... yeah it looks like it!" I replied, because we had... oddly for us..

"Well, as I was saying, would you like to go out there and build a snowman?" he asked..

"Really?" I wondered aloud..
"Yes really!"
I still didn't trust him, he was also known for some dastardly japes himself.

We all hesitated...

"Look for heaven's sake, go on will you whilst I'm still in a good mood!" Ian grinned, this was too good to be true.. so we grabbed bags, coats, scarves etc and ran out of the room, down the stairs, across the foyer and out into the falling snow... giggling like, well, like schoolgirls to be honest..

Oooh it was cold though... soo cold that there was none of the usual wet stuff you get on snowy days in the Midlands, it looked like the dry and cold days that people in Scandinavian countries, and Canada are blessed with, so we paused and donned our coats etc, and ran onto the back field to make a snowy start.

Alas, we made another discovery. After all the cold weather we were experiencing, the snow wouldn't stick together as we started to make the required big body snowball, it just wouldn't stick together. When we tried to throw them at each other they just crumbled in flight. So we sat an thought for a second. Then i looked and Angie, and she looked at me...and we said simultaneously "Igloo! Why don't we build an igloo?"

More of our classmates had joined us by this point and they all agreed, so Angie and I walked up to her house, which adjoined the school not ten metres away from where we were standing. her mum was in! this just got better! her Mum happily lent us three spades and shovels, so giggling further we carried them back and started to cut square blocks from the packed and frozen snow. These were lifted into place, and we soon had the makings of a fine wall indeed (Not unlike the Pink Floyd one) Then we noticed another problem. Igloos have a curve, ours didn't due to our not thinking ahead, so we had a choice. We could either stop and reconsider starting again with a curve from the ground up, or shout "Soddit" and carry on to see how tall we could get it. So, galvanised with tea from Angie's Mum, we pressed on. Then came lunchtime, and a crowd gathered, not to demolish the wall, strangely, but to assist! some had cameras, it being end of term. Mr Chapman came out and took pictures as well.. The wall was taller than me by now, and it kept growing as kids added to it..

years later, people from the school ask me about that igloo attempt.. the last one was the other week, 28 years later..God I live in a quiet town...

*I went to an experimental school where we called most of the teachers by their first names,some you just didn't though..

I apologise for the length, about 25ft ish, and the height, a shade over six feet..(2metres)
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Fri 30 Jan 2009, 15:29, Reply)