IT is a long time since I have seen my 13-year old granddaughter Abbey as excited as she was on Christmas Day. It wasn’t just the vast array of presents she had received, the family gathered for a sumptuous festive feast and watching the Queen’s Christmas broadcast - it was the return of her all-time favourite television programme Call the Midwife.

Quite what is the appeal of a bunch of ancient nuns, cockney slum dwellers and cycling nurses in silly hats is to a ultra modern teenager is something which is beyond my ken, but she was quivering with excitement all day.

She used to be exclusively a Harry Potter gal, but the nuns of Nonnatus House have knocked the Hogwarts hero into a cocked wizard’s hat.

But when it eventually arrived on Christmas night, I found myself thoroughly enjoying travelling back to the days when I was knocking on the door of my teenage years myself.

It wasn’t the unlikely storyline of a stillborn baby which came back to life in a briefcase with the aid of a hot water bottle, the walrus moustachioed police sergeant with the grumpy exterior concealing a heart of flint or an elderly Ange orf of EastEnders being reunited with her abused daughter - it was because the action was set at the start of the wicked winter of 1963..

I remember waking up in Macclesfield on Boxing Day 1962 and noting with delight it had snowed, giving me chance to try out my new sledge. I did not think for a moment it would be almost April before we saw the grass in our back garden again.

I have lived through lots of wintry weather since, with many feet of snow, temperatures so cold as to freeze the diesel in the fuel tanks of timber wagons, and to leave a foot thick icicle dangling over the conservatory of Hextol Towers like the Sword of Damocles, but none has matched the 1963 winter for sustained savagery.

It seemed to snow every day for weeks with no easing of temperatures, and the ground remained like white iron for an eternity.

Wellies were worn so often that boys had permanent chapped and blistered black “wellie marks” round the top of their calves, as most still wore shorts all the year round. I took to eating ice, a foolish exercise as I knew that the ponds in question comprised stagnant water of dubious potable nature - and paid by suffering several days of fountaining bodily orifices.

I also recall buying a bottle of limeade from the Corona Man, a travelling purveyor of soft drinks - but as soon as I unscrewed the cap, the entire contents instantly froze solid and smaded the bottle!

And when I was locked out one day, I tried to shout through the letter box for my brother to let me in – and my lips froze to the metal. My brother and I went for a walk with my father to a local beauty spot, a lake known as Redesmere, where in summer we would feed the ducks and plodge in the shallows.

When we got there, the lake was not nowhere to be seen, just an unbroken expanse of thick white snow.

With the sort of derring do which would doubtless be frowned upon these days, we had no hesitation in walking out over the ice, delighting at the booming and cracking noises emanating from the ice as we did our own version of the Mexican Hat Dance which had taken British ice dancers Courtney Jones and Doreen Denny to the world title a couple of years earlier.

As we sashayed over the ice, we caught a glimpse of something moving slowly across the ice several hundred yards away – and realised it was one of the resident ducks, which appeared to be in difficulty.

We made our way towards it to establish the problem - and a blazing pair of coal black eyes made it clear that this mallard had gobbled its last piece of Mother’s Pride. It was literally a dead duck, clamped firmly in the jaws of a marauding stoat, which was clearly furious at the arrival of three humans on its hunting ground.

But its nerve failed it, and it scampered away over the snowy wastes, casting baleful glaces back over its sinuous shoulder. We backed hastily away, hoping that the little hunter would return for the hard won prey that was many times bigger than it – I would like to think it did.