91热爆

After the episode where the Germans tried to stomp all over my family (Thundrous Boots), my father and mother decided that Essex was altogether too dangerous a place to bring up two small children. So granny and grandad in North Wales were lumbered with a daughter-in-law and two rowdy boys. It was a mutually unenjoyed experience.

The summer of 1940 was hot and seemed to go on forever, but we paid for it when the seasons finally turned.Llanrwst at the time was mainly sustained by a slate quarry. The only other major industry was treating people from the quarry who had lost limbs through either explosions or being crushed by rockfalls.

It seemed to me that the whole damned town was built from slate. The rooves were; the walls of the houses were; the floors of the house were. So were the garden paths and the very roads themselves.

Now, dry slate is a very good electrical insulator, but as a thermal insulator it is head of the nowhere league.It keeps the wind at bay but that is as far as it is prepared to go.The numbing cold seeps in.

Ten year-old boys are not supposed to feel the cold but I was paralysed with it.The only way to keep a semblance of warmth was for the three of us;me,mum,and brother to crowd into one bed as early as possible and try to shiver up a modicum of heat.
Then it snowed.
Only about four feet at first, but after a little practice it settled down to some serious snowing.

We started sending letters back to our Dad who had remained behind, begging to be allowed to return home.We recounted the horrors of the cold and the Siberian climate. He responded with tales of the Hell of the bombing. The concensus was, Hell was warm. Siberia is not.
We went home.

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