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Hop, Skip and Jump

Winters in our prefab were cold. With the lack of any heating, other than the coal fire in the living-room, coupled with the bitter winds that whipped inland from the English Channel during those long, dark months; going to bed as a small boy in the 1950's was, without doubt, an uncomfortable experience.

Few of the families living on Dover's post-war prefab estate could afford the luxury of wall to wall carpet, and ours was no exception. In common with many households of the time the floor covering in our home consisted chiefly of patterned linoleum.

The living-room was warm and cosy with a large carpet square in the centre of the room and a small rug in front of the fire, which was the sole domain of my cat 'Tibbs' - or so he believed. 'Tibbs' and I could often be found passing many a happy hour sitting on 'his' rug, side by side. I would sit cross legged, chin in cupped hands while my knees became increasingly reddened by the fire as I stared into the ever changing flames. He, with closed eyes, would purr in warm contentment as the wireless entertained us with programmes such as 'The Archers' or 'Sing Something Simple' with the Cliff Adams Singers.

My bedroom however was austere. I can remember waking up many times on winter mornings only to find that a thin layer of ice had formed on the inside of the bedroom window, and all I had in the way of protection from the coldness of the floor was a small rag-rug on either side of my metal-framed bed. The remaining floor space in the room was covered with lino lying over hundreds of pages of newspapers such as the Dover Express, Daily Mirror or the News of the World; an economical substitute for backing paper.

To avoid freezing to death while getting ready for bed, I undressed in the living-room in front of the fire, putting on pyjamas that had been warmed on the fireguard. Slipping into 'toasted' pyjamas was a pleasurable feeling indeed, but those few minutes of total bliss paled into insignificance at the thought of what was to come. From that moment on I felt like 'Scott of the Antarctic'.

Although there were no floating icebergs, mountainous snowdrifts or blizzards to contend with, the vast stretch of barren, ice-cold floor covering that lay between the living-room and bedroom still had to be conquered. Laying warm feet upon cold lino can only be compared to visiting Dover beach in January and paddling in the sea.

Two factors could have prevented this ritual misery. One of which would have been

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