My brother Tom built an igloo in our garden in Tullow, Co Carlow. It was 1947. He was about 13 and he knew things. It snowed and froze and snowed and froze five or six times. There was a deep layer of hard-packed snow, so he got the spade and nicked and sliced blocks of snow just like concrete blocks and laid them carefully in a perfect circle as the walls grew.
Liam and I filled in the joints and smoothed the snow until it shone and glistened. Gradually the dome was formed. It was about 5ft high inside and about 8ft in diameter. There were no centimetres then.
He built an entrance tunnel and I crawled into it. What a fabulous wonder it was. We had a meal in there. I don’t know what it was, probably porridge, but it was magic. We had thick, cushy woollen socks that our mother knitted for us. (We learned to darn the holes caused by toenails that were not cut in time .)
It was a savage winter. The bedroom window froze on the inside and the linoleum on the floor was a real trial on frosty mornings. There was still snow on the square in May that year. The electricity went off from time to time, and we cooked dinner on the open fire in the dining room .
Schools were closed, doing untold damage to our developing intellects. Eventually a thaw came with rain, and Lugnacoille dumped its burden into the Slaney valley, causing more chaos. The igloo remained for long a source of happiness and warmth.
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