The snow of 63

Polly at the Beeb has asked her squad of Today Generation bloggers, all born on 28 October 1957, to look at each others' blogs for inspiration. And now she's gone off on holiday, leaving us to it. In search of her own inspiration, perhaps.

In desperation, I turned to my sister Elizabeth, who is two years younger than me, but whose memory is a lot fresher. Possibly because she's had less trash tipped into her brain than I have over the last several decades. Or, more likely, because she has two young children and works as a teacher, so needs to keep her wits about her.

"Deep snow in1963??? I remember you and nigel building an igloo - don't recall seeing snow like it since," says Elizabeth.

Ah yes. Fellow Today Generationer Neville remembers the snow too. It blanketed our garden. We wanted to make an igloo the Inuit way - cutting out smooth, square blocks of snow and building them up, block by block, into an elegant cupola. I remember taking a kitchen knife out into the garden to start work.

Sadly, the snow in Brentwood was not as densely packed as that in Ellesmere Island, so my brother Nigel and I modified a snowman-building technique mastered in previous winters. We rolled several big balls of snow together in a circle, hoisted another couple on top of the pile to make a roof, then plastered the gaps with more handfuls of white stuff.

The result was a misshapen cone made of a mixture of snow and rotted leaves. But it did have a door and a window, and it was possible to creep inside. It lasted a week before global warming took its inevitable toll.

"It has just occurred to me that maybe you and nigel weren't building an igloo, but attempting to bury me alive," says Elizabeth.

How can she possibly think that? Don't all small boys love their little sisters?