I REALLY could not believe that Name and Address supplied was praising Dudley Council for closing all the schools just because of two inches of snow.

In the real winters of the thirties and forties we managed to get to school in feet of snow not inches. The country has bred a nation of wimps over the last 40 years. After we got to school in those days we sat in cold classrooms and put the milk bottles on the lukewarm radiators to thaw out. Previous to that we had come down to frost on the inside of the windows not just the outside then out to the freezing Brewhouse to wash in cold water, that's if the cold water tap had not got frozen up. Then help to dig the snow from the front door, which was sometimes half way up it. The teachers probably lived just as far away as they do now but they walked to school the same as the kids. On the way back home from school at lunch time we called at the coal yard and wheeled a hundred weight of coal home and returned the barrow on the way back to school which we left at 4.30pm not 3.15pm. This was whether there was snow or not. They may breed them bigger these days but nowhere near as tough. Who are the real Whingers?

G Tibbets Wordsley