The Nearly Winter Whinge.

It's the coldest night since spring in dear old Blighty, and so tonight I'm feeling the first intimations that it's that time of year again. 

 

A time of rubbing thighs rapidly in the hope of achieving an effect which will last more than a few seconds, which it never does. A time of calculating how much it would cost to turn on supplementary heat for ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes to raise the room temperature a few tenths of a degree for maybe an hour. A time of snuffling, and feeling a level of tiredness which seems heavier when you're cold. A time of being uncomfortably aware of the animals out in much lower temperatures through long dark nights. A time of wondering how I managed the cold when I was younger, fitter, and stronger, and living in houses as inadequately heated as this one.

I'm whingeing like a flaccid wet wipe, aren't I? That's because I'm a natural whinger. I'm not actually as miserable as I probably sound. And, as ever, I'm fully aware that there are millions of people around the world who are experiencing far colder conditions than I am. Some of them are even being washed away by floods or adversely affected by other natural disasters. And so I realise that I'm not so badly off at all, really.

But I still dislike feeling cold. And I wanted to write a post and couldn't think of anything else to write about.

(And on a wholly unrelated note, I wonder why cats and birds flee at the merest hint of my presence, while dogs greet me enthusiastically. I'm tempted to think that cats and birds have some unusual inner sense which tells them something about me of which I'm unaware.)