So, you think it has been cold?
And, of course, it certainly has been. It has been colder in the past though. Bitter winters that I remember particularly, with snow and ice for week after week, were those of 1938/’39, 1940/’41, 1946/’47 and 1962/’63. There were many more I am sure but those are ones that, usually because of a memory of some way in which the icy weather affected me, have stuck in my mind.
These photographs were taken some time during the first three months of 1963 when we had a particularly long cold spell. The sea froze over near Clacton pier and, I have no doubt, at other places along our coastline. The first picture shows the snow-covered beach and frozen sea near the pier, the frozen ripples giving a wrinkled effect on the surface of the sea near the shoreline. The other picture shows how far the ice extended out to sea along over half the length of the pier.
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The winter of 1962/1963 was the only occasion during the fifty-three years that I have lived in Clacton that the sea has frozen over and, in fact, I haven’t heard of it having frozen at any other time.
I was employed by the Clacton Council at the time as a Public Health Inspector. I remember hearing of the difficulties encountered by grave-diggers in Clacton Cemetery. No sooner had they broken through one layer of frozen soil than the frost followed them down, freezing the next layer before they could get their spades into it.
In those days, of course, there was no winter fuel allowance and no cold weather payments for pensioners. I live in a well-insulated detached bungalow and am very grateful for the government’s winter fuel payment, which now totals £400. It knocks a substantial hole in the £1,500 that I pay annually for gas and electricity supply. I am also grateful for the fact that the Christmas bonus to us pensioners has been raised from a derisory £10 to a much-more-worthwhile £60. The first £10 of this has already been paid and, so I am assured, the remaining £50 will be paid some time this month.
In addition to those two payments that are not means-tested, there are ‘cold weather payments’ made to over-60s in receipt of Pension Credit, and to younger people on means-tested benefit who are either disabled or have a child under five years of age. These payments are of £25 for any period of seven consecutive days during which the air temperature falls to freezing point, Zero Celsius (or Centigrade as pensioners of my generation will remember it).
I certainly don’t envy those who are entitled to these pitifully inadequate sums. How much gas or electricity would you get during each 24 hour period for one seventh of £25; just over £3.50? It must be remembered too that those eligible for cold weather payments get nothing for weeks in which the temperatures, though sub-zero much of the time, didn’t fall below freezing point during seven consecutive days.
As is the case with all means-tested benefits there are many householders who aren't quite hard-up enough to qualify for the payments, but are still having extreme difficulty in paying today's inflated prices for gas and electricity.
Meanwhile it is said that there is a sum in the region of £5 billion in benefits of one kind or another that remain unclaimed.
Many of those entitled to those benefits will be pensioners. If you think that you might just possibly be one of them contact your local branch of Age Concern. They’ll be pleased to advise you and to help you fill in any necessary application forms. The phone number will be in the local phone book. If you live in the Tendring District the number is 01255 473346
Late News:
As I was writing this blog I received an email from my friend Ingrid in Germany. She and her husband live in Bayreuth where there is deep snow and the temperature at night has been right down to minus 19 degrees Celsius. That makes Clacton's occasional minus 2C or 3C seem like a heat wave! It isn't surprising that homes on the European mainland are generally much better insulated than ours are.
Myself, Ingrid and my son Pete during our visit to Zittau in 2007
The Camera Cannot Lie!’
Living as we do in a world in which trick photography and fake photography are thrust before our eyes every day of the week, more often to entertain us than to deceive us, it is difficult to believe that ‘the camera cannot lie’ was once taken as a statement of fact. How bland and uninteresting advertising on tv would be if the cameras were allowed to take only literally truthful pictures!
However, cameras lie only when prompted to do so by us humans. Strategically placed closed circuit tv cameras, unclouded as they are by emotion and able to record action as it is taking place, can record and recall events more fully and with greater accuracy than the human eye and memory. Despite inevitable protests about invasion of privacy I think that the CCTV cameras that are nowadays a feature of every town centre, do play a worthwhile part in the detection and deterrence of crime. They certainly make the law-abiding majority of us feel a great deal safer.
Limitations of this kind of surveillance include the fact that there are usually blind spots, the cameras can’t focus down to close-up, and they may tend to drive crime, especially antisocial behaviour, out of town centres and into back streets and suburbs.
For these reasons I think that we should welcome the decision of our Police Authority to trial the use of ‘head-cameras’ by some police officers within Colchester and the Tendring District. Fitted in front of the user’s ear, not unlike a hearing aid, the head-camera sees what its user’s eyes are seeing and provides a close-up view beyond the capacity of static CCTV.
. Chief Inspector Jon Hayter, Tendring’s District Police Commander, claims that they will be invaluable at gathering first-hand evidence of alcohol related crime and crime associated with antisocial behaviour. The cameras, he says, offer a two-fold benefit, ‘They get the best possible evidence of people committing offences and antisocial behaviour, and they will also act as a deterrent’.
They cost £1,000 each and in our area are to be used during the trial period on Friday and Saturday nights. I reckon they’ll prove to be money well spent.
‘What’s in a name?’
‘What’s in a name?’ asks love-sick teenager Juliet Capulet in Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Romeo and Juliet', ‘that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.’
Very true, but under certain circumstances, not only in the 16th century but today, names are important. The trouble is that we don’t all realize quite how important they can be to some of our fellow men and women. I have to admit that I was astonished at the outrage and indignation that erupted when we learned that Prince Andrew, while serving in the army as an officer-cadet, had referred to one of his fellow cadets as ‘ Paki’ in a tv interview. This, on the face of it seems a perfectly reasonable, if slangy, abbreviation of Pakistani. When I was in the army (though not, of course, in the officers' mess!) we habitually referred to any Scotsmen among us as Jocks, Welsh as Taffies, and Irish as Paddies. None, that I recall, ever objected. We didn't have any Pakistanis, Pakistan didn't exist at that time, but if we had had one I have no doubt he'd have been called Paki. It certainly wouldn't have been regarded as insulting, but rather as a tribute to his ethnic origin.
It seems though that ‘Paki’ evokes such shock and disgust because it is a 'hate word' and because of the insults and the ‘skinhead Paki-bashing outrages’ of two or three decades ago. No word is a 'hate word' unless it is used in hate and skin-heads weren't and aren't representative of the British people.
The first time that I heard the word ‘Brits’ used as an abbreviation of British was perhaps ten or fifteen years ago by an Irish Republican in a tv interview. He spat it out with hatred and loathing. Nevertheless the word itself is harmless enough and I have used it at times myself, probably in this blog. ‘Us Brits’, may be less grammatically correct that than ‘we Britons’ but it’s less pompous too.
My father was a regular soldier and one of the British Expeditionary Force that arrived in France immediately after the outbreak of World War I on 4th August 1914. It was allegedly referred to by the German Crown Prince Wilhelm as ‘General French’s contemptible little army’. The members of that little army pounced on the word ‘contemptible’ with joy. They used it as a badge of honour and forever after, those who survived the carnage took pride in being ‘one of the original “Old Contemptibles”’
I don't think that very many Britons get upset when Australians refer to us as Pommies nor, I think, do Australians mind being called Ossies. I don't suppose that Americans particularly like being called Yanks but I am sure that they have learned to live with it.
In the multi-ethnic society in which we live today, some of us including myself, probably have to be rather more sensitive than we have been about our careless words thoughtlessly hurting other people’s feelings. Is it possible though that others need to be just a little less sensitive about their own feelings and a little less ready to take offence and assume insult where none was intended?
There used to be a popular song, 'It ain't what you do, its the way that you do it, that's what gets results'. Perhaps it should be amended slightly to 'It ain't what you say, it's the way that you say it, that is what insults'.
Further thoughts
As I was about to post this blog the further furore over the Prince of Wales using the nickname 'Sooty' for a friend made the news headlines!
It occurs to me that it it isn't entirely a matter of 'the way that you say it' that makes all the difference, but who it is says it. Those whose indignation has made the story public may care to consider the possibility that the gentleman in question may have no objection whatsoever to being called 'Sooty' by his personal friends, but may dislike intensely this nickname being a matter of public discussion in the news media.
I am very happy when my grandchildren address me as Grandpa or Grandad but I'm a lot less pleased when a total stranger in a check-out queue does so!
Nicknames that I remember from my school days and army days include Buster, Curly, Darky (not racist - just a a fellow school-boy with unusually dark hair!), Oofy (goodness knows why), Hoompa (a chap with an unfortunate speech impediment), Ferret, Fatty and Squirrel, as well as the traditional Dusty for the surname Miller, Chalky for White, Nobby for Clark or Clarke, and Chips for Carpenter. Wearing glasses I was once, fairly briefly, known as Four-eyes but as I share a surname with a then well-known dance-band leader, my enduring nickname became Henry!
I don't think that any one of us objected to our nickname being used among our classmates or fellow-gunners but I'm sure that most of us wouldn't have wanted them to be in general use elsewhere. I was possibly the exception in that I was quite happy with the nickname Henry which endured well beyond my school and army days, some people imagining that it was my real name. Its use diminished and ceased as the memory of the 1930s dance-band leader faded but back in the early 1950s, when I was Housing Manager to a rural authority in Suffolk, I would often receive letters from tenants and others addressed to 'Mr H. Hall'!
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