A Country Childhood.

by Priscilla

The winter of 1947 was bitterly cold, I was nine years old and had two older sisters and a baby brother and lived at Pondtail Farm. There was a lake almost a mile away that drained through a brook that ran through a wood and passed our farm, which was the tail.

We had done a lot of skating that winter on the farm pond in our rough and tumble way, I had to use skates that strapped onto my shoes though my older sisters had skating boots.

One January evening my mother was sitting with we three girls in the kitchen, the only warm room in the house. Suddenly, to our amazement, she suggested that as it was such a lovely moonlight night we should skate up the brook to the lake. We all said YES!

We put on our warmest clothes, ragged tweed coats, woollen scarves, woollen gloves and pixie bonnets which tied under our chins. My glamorous mother wore a thick skirt, I can never remember her in trousers, and thick lisle stockings for it really was cold.

We set off into the night wearing gum boots and carrying our skates. So intent were we that I scarcely noticed the eeriness of the woods as the dry twigs cracked like fireworks under our feet. We weaved our way through the trees to the brook, sat down on the cold, cold bank and put on our skates, lacing them up with great difficulty in the dark with icy cold fingers. Once on, we all stood up and to our delight saw that the brook looked like a ribbon of moonlight winding and stretching before us between the trees.

The skating was not easy as the ice was rough and embedded with twigs and we had to be careful not to fall. We made slow progress, but as the trees receded the moonlight fanned out over the glorious lake. We were like caged birds set free! The ice became as smooth as glass and we glided and skimmed across. We hardly spoke, and even then in hushed voices as we all felt the same ethereal experience. I was the duffer of the family but it seemed that night that I could do anything – spin, twirl and fly through the air all with the greatest of ease. If anyone had spotted us out on the ice that night they would surely have thought that we were ghosts for who would have been out at that hour on such a cold night.

All too soon my mother called out that it was time to go home.

My skating days are over, but I never again skated as I did that night. Perhaps one needs moonlight and a little magic.