Death of the Chilblain

[steepholm]

I'm just reading Carrie's War, in which "everybody has chilblains". Like a madeleine going down the wrong way, this sentence took me back to being a Very Small Steepholm, standing in front of the three-bar electric fire at home with my cold fingers still damp from snow, and being told by my mother to move my fingers from the heat, "Lest you get chilblains."

Did I ever get chilblains? I can't even remember, now. Perhaps her timely admonition always did the trick. But the word was certainly much bandied in our house, circa 1968. Yet today I never hear them mentioned. Do I move in the wrong circles? Have they been wiped out, like smallpox? Have they changed their name to something more in keeping with the modern era? Or is it something to do with central heating, which also spelled the end of Jack Frost's amusing artwork on the inside of my bedroom window?

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I had chilblains every winter when I was a child - I think it was how cold our toes got walking around in the winter in the snow with thin shoes and socks, and then rewarming them by the fire. When we got central heating in the 1970s the chilblains departed forever.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It sounds as if your story is my own.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it, I think the change was warmer socks and shoes not central heating. People were paranoid about kids getting damp, but it was Ok for us to get as cold as anything.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't remember any change in footwear, personally. (I did hanker after a shoe with a compass in the heel, but my wish was never granted.) But we did move to a house with central heating in 1971.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I still get chilblains if I'm not careful, but that's because I have Raynaud's disease.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I was reading about that on a poster at my GP's surgery the other day. Ouch! Sounds like chilblains to the power of 10.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I used to get chilblains every winter, but as others have said, that was due to the feet getting really cold. I don't know whether the method of warming has anything to do with it. We always had central heating in my secondary school, though it was just a gas fire at home.

I think the reason you don't hear about them so much now is mostly due to cars. Standing waiting for buses in the cold was the prime cause of my chilblains. Also better shoes and boots that are much warmer and more waterproof mean that the feet don't get chilled like they used to.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether the method of warming has anything to do with it.

I don't know either, but I certainly developed a strong childhood sense that you shouldn't warm your hands or feet up too quickly, for fear of chilblains. Slow and steady wins the race to healthy hands and feet.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Like you, I don't recall ever getting them, but hearing them talked about a great deal.

It may have been to do with being bought up if a post war 'prefab' on a council estate. They were a long way ahead of their time with decent heating (albeit still coal fired) glazing and insulation, so that might be it! :o)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Those prefabs are pretty nifty, and still going strong in some places - e.g. this lot 10 minutes' walk from here. Not all post-war building was shoddy!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Those are, I think, what were called the 'American' prefabs which came from the US. Our was the 'British style, locally produced with a pitched roof and traditional chimney and tryng to look like a country worker's cottage.

They were supposed to last ten years and ended up doing service for thirty and even then were sold on and re erected in all sorts of places when the estate gor rebuilt at end of the seventies.

There's still one doing service as part of a social club which we can see from the back windows of where we live now! :o)

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I don't think we ever had Clamydia. (It always strikes me as a character from a Norman Thewell book on ponies - "Clamydia has gone to the gymkhana this afternoon")

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

And then she grew up...

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I remember being warned against chilblains when I tried to dry my feet by a big hot pipe at school, but I don't remember having any. (At home) we got central heating in the 1960s.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I even know what chilblains ARE. But I know they were something to be avoided...

[owlfish]

I get chillblains regularly.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear it; yet strangely comforted that they still exist.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Having discussed this particular topic with him over the weekend, it turns out that hubby used to get them as a kid, but then he was bought up in central Scotland, which might explain why!