Comment From Liz Blades On the Field In Winter

Liz,
Sorry, I hadn't realised there were further paras than I'd published so I've rectified publishing your comments in full below-pure chance/serendipity  that I stumbled upon the rest of your missive-makes me wonder if there are further comments out there that I missed.

I suspect you're most definitely the furthest travelled-I wonder what that says! I sometimes wonder what happened to Norman Stewart. Heather Swanson is in America-Florida, I think.

6/6 may be able to see the No 16 bus, but not 6/4 or 6/2. 

That was a brave step you took going to the States-life changing. Departures are strange things and we often handle them awkwardly, poorly or not recognising the moment for its full worth. I tried to bring this theme out in the blog For Whom The Bell Tolls. The Scottish/Australian folk singer Eric Bogle captures this in his performance (preface/song) Leaving Nancy-if you're not familiar with it check it out. 

I wasn't going to mention the topic again and it's not a competition (!), but since I'm responding-I'd met up with my mother and sister in Edinburgh on Saturday and whilst acknowledging everything you said on our fathers, we felt a key difference for us was the fear factor which was always there for us because KH was such a very intimidating individual. Anyway-don't feel obliged to respond-we've probably done that one to death!

I've enjoyed our wee chats across the globe-it would be good to keep in touch.
Best.
Peter
x

Hi Peter, 

I think I remember those winters and the sledding more so than the summer. Maybe because the snow made things seem pristine, new, and fresh. It made things sparkle - a pleasant change from the dull concrete jungle that was Oxgangs. 

I remember the treacherous ice slides on the pavements and the hard packed snow on the field. It was exhilarating flying down the hill on a sled. I remember using a light low sled, basically a flat 'bed' to lie or sit on with 2 short wooden runners attached. I don't think this was the sled Mr Hogg made, which I don't remember, but thinking back it seemed similarly home-made.

Anyway I was about 9 or 10 yrs and I wanted to emulate the older lads who ran with the sled and launched themselves to lie on it in motion. I unfortunately allowed the rope to trail under the sled as I ran forwards and trod on it just as I launched myself. Of course the sled stopped sharply as I continued going! As you said the hard packed snow was iron hard and my face bore the brunt, severely damaging my front teeth and taking off a layer of skin (ice burn). It was so cold I didn't feel much and felt more foolish than anything but the next day my face was a mess!I think I had a dermabrasion long before we knew what that was!

As for the trees, my how they have grown. I remember those spindly saplings which seemed to forever require propping up. But they made it to maturity forming a copse there on the hill. I wonder if we would still be able to see the No 16 bus coming down the hill?!

On an earlier topic you mentioned leaving Oxgangs in 1972 which I did also although I think it was earlier in the year. I may have been the first to go. I moved into a share house, a beautiful ground floor garden flat in the new town. I worked in Charlotte Square and so I used to walk to and from work, and later that year I went to Philadelphia in the US to work as a 'mother's help'. Now in Australia since 1988, I wonder if I am the former resident now most removed geographically from the stair? Liz Blades

The Field In Winter and the Last of the Mohicans

I've alluded to The Field on several occasions over the months.

It served all the kids at The Stair well as a playground over the four seasons of the year.

And although we at the four stairs at 2, 4, 6 and 8 Oxgangs Avenue saw it as our personal fiefdom it actually also represented a neutral point in the community which drew in others from Oxgangs Street and also across Oxgangs Road North including children and teenagers from Oxgangs Farm Drive.

In the main this was to play football - occasionally someone would fly a kite and for one summer we actually played some cricket!

This was courtesy of Norman Stewart who had received the cricket set from his grandparents for a birthday.

It was actually good fun.

For Norman it was a game he could play and compete on a level playing ground so to speak as he didn't play much football.

These were all mainly boys orientated, but the one game which was gender neutral and all the better for it was the games of rounders that both girls and boys participated in. Rounders were great fun and normally no team was in for too long which kept the interest going.

From around 1966 onwards the annual bonfires that used to be held in the wee field directly out the back of The Stair were deemed by the Fire Brigade and Edinburgh Corporation as being far too close to us all as it indeed they were; certainly the Blades, the Hoggs and the Hoffmanns didn't need a fire on bonfire night such was the heat that emanated toward the Stair. At least the Swansons, the Stewarts and the Smiths were on the wrong or should that be the right side of the bonfire; whereas the Duffys and the Hanlons were a bit safer on the top landing.

Where the field really came alive however was when the snows of winter came. It was then that The Field truly came into its own.

The ground may have been frozen hard as iron and to all extents dead, but it was alive with children and young people both girls and boys.

What a sight it was to behold - a carpet of white adorned with well wrapped up stick like figures, some quite colourful, but more likely inside the dark blue nylon anoraks or duffel coats that many of us wore at that time, starkly contrasted against the landscape, black on white, the scenario was straight out of a Lowrie painting.

And then when dusk came and the night fell and the street-lights on Oxgangs Road North slowly began to flicker on and the dancing headlamps of the cars and buses carrying the workers home, watchers by the threshold could catch happy flitting figures dancing across the white landscape of The Field.

Dozens of sledges of different sizes would come down the hill.

The more adventurous ones had polished up the runners so that the sledge flew; others were much more apprehensive and went down with their feet hanging over either side. The more daring would aim to both extend the length of the run by skilfully manoeuvring through the gap in the fence and fly into the drying green; some were even full hardy enough to fly over the steps too coming down to rest adjacent to our back garden at 6/2!

As mentioned on a profile of Douglas Blades the Blades family enjoyed using the big sledge that Mr George Hogg had built; and Norman Stewart had the classiest sledge in the district The Flying Dutchman.

Gavin and Heather Swanson had sledges but were quite conservative on the slope.

The Ramage twins, Les and Derek from 4/3 had nice light sledges.

I don't recall the Hanlons having sledges.

The Hoffmanns didn't have sledges, although Iain may have used an old beer tray that our father, Mr Ken Hoffmann possibly brought home from a pub, but essentially we never owned a sledge so we became boarders instead - not always popular with many sledgers because we would await for a passing sledge to come by and then try to run alongside and dive on board it; those individuals who were lying on their stomach on the sledge were particularly prone to being dived upon or sat upon.

Of course we were not always successful and often ended up missing the sledge or falling off or indeed bringing the owner off too - still great fun ending up rolling in the snow!

We'd play outside for hours until we became too cold, too wet or we were called in and then we'd head for home chittering as our mothers pulled off our wet clothes that had stuck to our backs and we'd hop around as we encouraged others to pull off our Wellington boots. The drying cupboard in the sitting room would be chock-full of clothes and our Wellington boots would be lined up like soldiers in front of the coal fire to dry out

Just before coming in we'd have made sure we'd taken part in one of the other fun rituals of playing at The Field - throwing snowballs at the slow moving vehicles going up the gauntlet of Oxgangs Road North.

We mainly chose the buses as they were large slow moving targets with as many as a dozen of us lined up and at a given call an array of snowballs would be fired at the bus windows.

It must have pissed the passengers off no end - it was like medieval warfare in the dark midwinter as many as twenty snowballs flew through the air and bombarded and thudded against the windows of the bus.

Once home and inside and later into the evening I would occasionally glance out from our living room window and look out to The Field. 

It had become quieter; numbers had dwindled as children made their weary way home, until there might be only a solitary figure left, sledging downhill; of a sudden the last sledge run would take place and The Field became eerily silent.

Today The Field remains in winter, but winter throughout the spring, summer and autumn seasons of the year too. 

The only figures there are the trees which were planted many decades ago and somehow thrived and of course the ghosts of the Hanlons; the Duffys; the Blades'; the Hoggs; Norman Stewart; the Swansons; and the Hoffmanns and all the hundreds of other children from all those decades ago. 

I wonder what child was the very last sledger?

Winter is Coming - The First Of December and The Onset Of Winter

One of James Taylor's most lovely songs, Sweet Baby James, includes the lines Now The First of December was covered in snow. And so was the Turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston. 

Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas, Norman Rockwell

Before the boys were born and my wife Alison was a high flyer she flew up from a business week in New York to join me in Boston in the Fall.

A small highlight was our visit to the famous small town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts which featured so memorably in James' song.

At The Stair, as we moved into the late Fall - autumn - and the ever shorter light days of November were ticked off the calendar and with winter now fast approaching on the first of December it was time to look out the hot water bottles from the depths of the cupboards.

It wasn't that we had turned our noses up at electric blankets - no - it was just that in the early 1960s they were as scarce as hens' teeth in Oxgangs.

Whereas in direct contrast, you could just imagine that come the frosty mornings and nights of winter, our Greenbank neighbours were sleeping more comfortably under a fug of electric blankets, whilst the adjacent population at Oxgangs trooped off to bed chittering as they carried their hot water bottles through to cold bedrooms.

Greenbank Cottage in the snow.

If you were smart and remembered, in the immediate period leading up to bed-time you would pay a few quick visits to the bedroom to move the bottle around the bed to help take the winter chill off the sheets and spread the heat around, before diving in after brushing your teeth.

But more normally it was a case of slipping into a cold  bed with one lovely warm toasty spot where the hot bottle lay.

Indeed the hot water bottle was usually so hot you would have to carefully move it around touching it gingerly every so often with your toes.

For many years we had old stone hot water bottles which I think we inherited from grandparents; they probably sell for a small fortune today.

However, gradually, rubber hot water bottles began to appear in the household; they always gave off a distinct smell - was it the chemical reaction of the hot water against the rubber?

So, filling up hot water bottles was an evening ritual in Oxgangs throughout the long, dark months from December through to early March and the onset of spring. And it was also the signal that very shortly we three young children would have to reluctantly head off to our beds - my father would twirl his hand around, before pointing toward the bedroom whilst doing a Roger Whitaker-like whistle saying Okay, time to get the hot water bottles made up!

Rather like transporting the hot water from the stand alone gas boiler in the kitchen to fill the bath, similarly filling up hot water bottles was a potentially dangerous thing to do - indeed even if we've had to fill up a hot water bottle today I'm reluctant to allow our sons in their early 20's to do so, but back then we seemed to manage fine over the years with no mishaps.

I'm sure having a hot water bottle in our beds was far healthier than an electric blanket although I wonder what that old-young sage Oor Wullie would say - I'm sure such stories must have featured in The Fun Section over the decades.

Today, I like to kid on how stoical I am by voluntarily sleeping without any such comfort keeping the window open throughout the winter - at least until more recently since hitting my early 60's. I guess we all find ourselves repeating many of the things our older relatives said - you really do feel the cold more as you get older; indeed as soon as I finished today's running session the long sleeved tops, buffs and woolly hat were straight on.

And so, Winter is Coming.

But in contrast to the stark image above, over the decades we've bought wee serendipites from such trips to Stockbridge to lighten the dark and decorate our cheerful Christmas tree, so the small wooden church we purchased 30 years ago will soon be making its annual appearance.

But no hot water bottles or electric blanket thus far...but my wife returns from Oz this Friday, so who knows...