Lessons in childhood.

It was one of those really cold winters that we nearly lost one of the lads.

We lived on Riley's Hill, close to Priestley Clough. In fact Priestley Clough was our playground. If you walked up the top path it took you to Fern Gore....if you walked on the bottom path alongside the lodge the you would end up at Baxenden...the Five Arches.
Summer or Winter, we were not supposed to play by the lodge...but of course children do not listen to their parents.....and that goes for any generation. Parents would tell you not to do the most interesting things.... the things you really felt would be adventurous...but parents saw them as dangerous.

This particular year the lodge was frozen over. In one part where it was shallow it looked as though it was solid.....but the deeper part had thick ice at the edges and the ice got thinner towards the middle.
Being the eldest i was charged with the responsibility of making sure that my(then) three little brothers did not get into any 'lumber' as Ma used to call it.
I hasten to add that these three brothers were 16 months younger than me,2 and a half years younger and 3 and a half years younger than me...and I was perhaps 10 years old at the time.
Michael was the one who engineered mischief and the other two followed on with it....Michael was maybe 7......he decided it would be good fun to skate on the ice.
There was a place where the railings had been prised apart by generations of children who wanted to fish in the lodge, and there was a very narrow bank at this part.
This part of the lodge was shallow and the ice looked fairly thick...in anycase, if it broke it would only just come up to your knees.
The lads were happily skating on this bit of the lodge when Michael decided he would cross the stone barrier and go onto the large part of the lodge.......the deep bit.
I was keeping 'cavy'...watching for the watchman who worked at the mill....if he caught us we would be for it, because not only would we get told off, but he would take us home and report to Ma......and then we would be in big bother.

I watched Michael edge nearer to the deep water and he was slipping and sliding....the next news ....he was through the ice and in the water. Oh my God.......I grabbed a fallen branch from a tree and held it out to him.....he kept trying to get out, the ice kept breaking beneath his weight......eventually in a concerted effort we managed to drag him to the bank.

He was blue with cold and shivering with shock. Luckily, we were only about five minutes from home.......we hurried back to the house....Michael was dripping smelly water and mud....but it was so cold that it was starting to freeze on him.

I got into the backyard and ran up the steps....pushed the back door open with my bum and there was Ma....she took one look at my face and knew straight away that there was something wrong......she went to the back door, looked down the back steps.... There was Michael at the bottom of the steps......blue, freezing and shivering.
She was furious....she went into the kitchen and filled an enamel bucket with cold water from the tap.....went back to the top of the steps and flung the cold water all over him, saying 'You like water?....I'll bloody teach you to like water!'....then she dragged him in the house and stripped his clothes off him....ran a big enamel basin of hot water and topped it up with cold so that it was just warm.....and his warming up process had begun......It was finished off by a hand warming of his bare bottom and we were all sent to bed without any tea....and I got my ears boxed too. The fact that I had saved the life of my errant little brother was not taken into consideration......I was told I wouldn't have had to save him if none of us had been there. So did we learn a lesson?
What do you think?