"JPG" wrote Many kids of my age (57)
will remember that a good snowfall was an excuse for the creation of
long ice-slides in the playground and all sorts of other dangerous
sports, such as ice-cored snowballs, shoving snow into the girl's
knickers and trying to get teacher (preferably headmaster) with a
well-timed snowball.

As someone of almost the same vintage, I can relate to that. In the
1962/3 winter, we had a junior school teacher who joined in on a very long
slide we had made in the playground. Very good he was, too.

However, he was a smoker (different time, eh?) and the matches he kept in
his back pocket all spontaneously caught light as he went down the slide
for the nth time. The resulting scene was straight out of "Tom & Gerry",
as he tried to put his burning trousers out. He eventually threw himself,
seat first, into the nearest snowdrift!

- Tom.