The Good Old Days

by David Sutton

(New & Selected Poems 1965-2005, Peterloo Poets)

I'll tell you this, the good old days were cold.

November through to March, our fire was lit

Mid-afternoon, burned up to warmth by evening

When you could get at it for drying clothes

And when it hadn't been put out by falls

Of soot or snow, or else my father burning

Shovelfuls of frozen nutty slack

Scraped from the backyard bunker, or wet logs.

The wind would moan and rattle in the hall.

Doing my homework, six feet from the fire,

I'd freeze on one side, scorch upon the other

Like one of Dante's sinners. Sunday night

Was bath-night; being youngest, I came last

To tepid greasy water heated up

With kettles, while our ancient oil-stove fluttered

Moth-wings of warmth against the icy air.

Going to bed, you shivered for ten minutes

In crackling sheets, curled up your feet away

From arctic nether regions, tried again

And then it came, a warmth at last, like none

A coddled generation can imagine,

A Stone Age bliss, a blood-heat; so you slept,

Waking to winter harvest: sheaves of frost

Heraldic, radiant, on every pane.

This is such an appropriate poem for March, and David Sutton's reminiscences of being cold in winter need no explanation. His childhood experience is familiar to me, and will be to anyone who has not been “coddled”.

When he was young - in what we might call “the good old days” because we tend to forget the archaic laws, lack of amenities and even, perhaps, rationing - he recalls the cold. Cold makes us sluggish and useless; it envelopes us in physical and mental misery.

Sutton's memories of that time are akin to my memories of living in Ireland as a child: there were two houses, the first was hidden in the woods near the river, dark and damp and as cold as the water. That was where one of the most marvellous meals I ever ate was a trout my father hauled directly from the river and immediately cooked over a makeshift fire on the riverbank.

The second house was on a slope that overlooked a stony, seaweed-draped beach where one could fish from the rocks. As beautifully positioned as it was, with its view over the ocean, this house possessed no running hot water. There was only an old water pump in the kitchen, which was used to draw ice-cold brackish well-water to an old tap. The water was collected in one of two huge enamel coffee pots and warmed on the (peat-burning) stove before it was dribbled into the cast-iron bath where it would instantly chill. We were lucky if four inches of water were warm enough to wash in. Staying dirty never felt so good.

Even back in England the sheets were always ice-cold in winter; we had no such thing as central heating. I remember the glacial corners of the bed should my foot stray from the hamster-ball I became to keep warm, and my father spending whole evenings trying to fix little blow heaters that resembled ovoid Daleks, and which constantly broke down.

I would sometimes wake in the morning with clouds of my breath billowing over the blankets beneath which I huddled, and with ice on the window in “sheaves of frost” exactly as in the poem. Once warm, getting out of bed required leaps of false enthusiasm into the frigid air, and the rapid donning of layers of icy clothing in which one would jump up and down in an effort to generate heat.

I remember too, when I eventually had a home of my own, how the only means of heating was the huge fireplace in the living room. The heat would disappear straight up the chimney. I'd have to actually sit in the fireplace itself, which was wide enough to put a stool by the grate. Turning like a pig on a spit in front of the flames evened out the discomfort of freezing on one side and roasting on the other. The need for warmth is more important than people know, who have never been truly cold.

Two days ago it snowed, albeit briefly, and the nights are still bitter. But I no longer care; I have discovered the electric blanket. The good old days were great - because we're not there any more.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk