The thing is about blogging, or writing on social media in any way, I can put down anything I want about myself, but not about others.  So I’ll just say that one of my grandchildren has been very ill with a perforated appendix and now, though still in hospital, is much better.  The crisis is past but we’re all still feeling a bit fragile.  I didn’t feel like blogging during that period, though, so apologies for disappearing without a word.

The snow is also over, though a surprising amount still lingers.  When it turned to rain, there was some local flooding and even now, after several days without frost, there are great heaps by some of the roads where either the snow drifted or it was pushed by snow ploughs.  I never did complete my snowman, it was so bitterly cold that playing in the snow wasn’t fun at all.

Back to the time I referred to in the previous post – it must have been between 1976 and 1979, Weeza and Al were small children.  The Sage’s office had closed between Christmas and New Year and then, over the New Year, a great deal of snow fell.  Where we lived at the time, there was a private road leading up to the church – I don’t mean that people were not allowed down it, just that it was unadopted by the Council, though it was tarmac’ed (I wonder how you spell that? – too lazy to look it up), and it filled with a few feet of snow.  We couldn’t get the car out and Lowestoft had ground to a halt, pretty well, anyway.  Russell had to take the whole of the next week off work and most offices just shut down.

We had a fabulous week.  Toddler Al and little girl Weeza thought it was all great fun.  We gave them rides on the sledge and walked down to the village shop, with them on the sledge, to do our shopping.  We built snowmen, threw snowballs and went for walks along the snowy beach.  We were sorry when the weather warmed up, the snow turned to slush and life returned to normal.

Russell had never taken so much time off work before since the children had been born and it was rather a revelation to him.  He’d been a bachelor of nearly 37 when we married, was always a hands-on daddy but I was very much in charge of organising family life and most of the fun and games.  I was still in my mid-twenties at that time, pretty young myself and, having had a loving but not at all child-centred upbringing, was very keen to do with my children the things that my parents had been totally uninterested in doing with me.  Childish fun was really important to me – in fact, I still don’t want to forget about that.  I don’t mind growing old but I don’t want to forget the feeling of being young.

So this brilliantly enjoyable time off from his everyday working life had a lasting effect.  He spent less time in the office and more with us – it was his own business and it was up to him how he organised his days, as long as the work was done.  And, by 1979 – there were various factors but one of them was enjoying his children while they were young – he’d decided to sell his half of the business back to his partner and choose a less lucrative but more family-centred way of making his living.

I’ll tell you about that next time.  Which will probably be tomorrow 🙂