Danny has to get out his Winter Woolies.
The rest of the '55 autumn, I spent settling down to my work on Approach Control at Strubby; we closed the deal on 133 Victoria Road and gratefully moved in to our new little paradise. About this time Manby held their Autumn Ball, and we exchanged a few words with the legendary "Gus" Walker (having been carefully briefed to shake his (remaining) left hand. The next (Saturday) afternoon we rose at 4 p.m. It had been a good party.
The nights grew longer, the hour came off and we were looking forward to our very first Christmas. My mother was to join us from Heswall: she would get the train to Lincoln, We would drive across and pick her up from there. The weeks flew by. By now the summer visitors had all gone, all the "attractions" were boarded up; Mablethorpe lived on its fat - and on the RAF families !
The winter before had not been bad, and it was reasonably mild right up to Christmas. I collected Mother without difficulty. Then the snow came, a raging blizzard all along the East coast and a dump of snow which would have no equal until the once-in-a-century monster in'62-'63.
The power went down first. That was not too bad, everyone was well stocked with candles (but it was a nuisance that the little TV was "off"). Roads were impassable over a wide area, and an additional hazard was the miles of telegraph wire which had come down with the poles in the gale, and was now all over the place.
It was impossible to get out to Strubby by road, but we could get out as far as the railway station at the back of town. The steam snow ploughs had kept the trains running, so for a day or two we did our duty and took the train to Manby (if you can't reach your own Station, you must report to anywhere you can). IIRC, we didn't go as far as Manby railway station, but by arrangement with the driver, dropped off a couple of fields away from the airfield and battled through the snow on foot.
SATCO (from Sutton-on-Sea, a few miles south) had managed to get to Strubby (paradoxically, his roads were passible, although he was further away) and was none too pleased that most of his crew were now in the wrong place. But it made no difference, both fields were under a dump of snow beyond any hope of clearance; we just hung about, useless mouths, until it became obvious that the only sensible thing was to stay at home and sit it out.
North Sea gas was far in the future, Mablethorpe was on "town gas"; it had its own little gasworks at the back of town; every day the townsfolk looked out to the two small gasometers to check on the "sink" (if any) compared with yesterday, and worried about how long it would last - for of course the coal stocks were running down as supplies were having difficulty in getting through.
Domestic heating everwhere was from open-hearth fires in those days. The prudent householder had laid in as much as his coal cellar or bunker could hold. The family lit a fire in one (possibly two at the most) rooms and huddled around it. Bedrooms and bathrooms were freezing. But that had always been so. Fr.McEnery from Louth wouldn't have been able to get through on the Sundays; I would be excused stoker duty, but we must have drained down the church CH system to avoid damage, but I don't recall doing so.
The real nightmare was water supply. (Most of) Lincolnshire is flat as a pancake: in order to keep up a head of water pressure there was a Water Tower at the back of town. Water was pumped up into this by electric pumps. Here was the Achilles Heel. Of course Mablethorpe's Water Tower had a standby diesel generator; I don't suppose it'd been serviced for years; it broke down after a few days; spares would take ages. The town looked like becoming uninhabitable. (We well recall melting snow in buckets for all purposes). The big pub across the road (the "Eagle") became very popular at lunchtimes.
Mablethorpe was full of RAF families from Strubby. GCA stepped into the breach. The Matador (6x4) which carried our power unit was unhitched (Strubby was snowbound, anyway) and, Lord only knows how, got across the five miles of country to the Water Tower. I imagine the local farmers must have lent powerful tractors to help haul our truck on its errand of mercy. They hooked it up to the pumps: the day was saved, and someone should have got an MBE out of it, but I don't think anyone did.
Eventually the weather relented, the roads were cleared, the power came back (or the spares for the standby arrived, don't know which), the Matador went back to Strubby. We cleared the runways and we were back in business.
That's enough for the moment.
Cheers, Danny42C
Many are cold but few are frozen.