A Family History of the Illustrious, Notorious and Eccentric Lloyds of Birmingham, Brigstock and Pipewell Hall - Flipbook - Page 67
During these hard winters there was plenty of scope for skating and ice hockey. In addition to the
Abbey fish ponds at Pipewell, there were usually plenty of floods that froze over very quickly and
provided excellent ice. I recollect one very hard winter when the vast Eye Brook Reservoir in Rutland
froze over in 1947 and hundreds of skaters came there from far and wide. Many games of ice hockey
were under way simultaneously, varying from almost professional games with proper ice hockey sticks
and pucks, to farmers playing with their shepherds crooks as sticks, and a piece of frozen horse dung as
a puck. Uncle Tim was an excellent ice hockey player with a proper stick, and fine figure skater too. He
taught Deborah and I to skate inside and outside edge circles, and to suddenly switch to skating
backwards. This served me in good stead many years later in 1977 when, as Chairman of our American
Bible, Dictionary and Childrens' Publishing subsidiary, I was visiting Charles Schultz III, the creator of
Peanuts, bidding for the American Publishing Rights of his Peanuts Childrens' Titles, at his home in
Sonoma County, California. His first wife could not think what she should give him for Christmas one
year, as he seemed to have everything he could want. As a passionate ice hockey player, he suggested
