How could I forget?

It happens every year. There is nothing mysterious about it. Yet somehow it seems that my weather memory is so short that every six months I am astounded by the new extremes that the climate reaches. And this is in Britain- the island for which I believe the word ‘temperate’ was invented. No Canadian style ‘thirty-below’s for us. No Russian style drifts of snow that last for weeks and weeks. No Mediterranean sun-parched months. No deaths by hailstones. No tornadoes. Just understated, bleary, grizzly-greyness all year round. Occasionally punctuated by….

COLD It is so cold.. It’s so cold that just the idea of walking anywhere without my gloves makes me want to weep. It’s so cold that just the thought of forgetting my hat makes my ears scream in blue frostbitten agony and start to burrow themselves into my brain in self-defence. It’s so cold that the wind whips your breath away, snapping it out of your mouth and tossing it down the street before you can croak any kind of a protest. It’s so cold that all noses are stuck straight down at the ground, safely tucked into scarves. Arms are wrapped around bodies. Couples are wrapped round each other.

It’s so cold that only the word ‘bitter’ fully describes the kind of purple-lipped, chapped-cheeked, chattering-teethed-ness of it. It’s so cold that when one morning I made the mistake of leaving firstflat without drying my hair properly, it felt as though a pair of icy hands were clamped around my skull and compressing my brain into an ice-cube.

It’s so cold I am thinking about throwing out all of my summer clothes simply because I know, categorically, that there is no way in the world I will ever want to wear any of them ever again. In fact, I’m not sure I will ever feel warm again. Floaty flowery skirt with vest top and sequined flip-flops? What was I thinking? How did I escape death by hypothermia? Why did I want to expose so much skin instead of wrapping it all up in knitted fabrics and curling up in front of the fire?

And of course, in typical British way- at least a small part of every single person is really quite pleased that it’s cold. “Cold, isn’t it?” we remark conversationally to the man who sells the Underground tickets, to the woman in the newsagent who sells the morning newspaper, to the person sitting next to us in the bus. “Really cold!”
”Yes,” they agree. And perhaps, if they’re feeling really voluble, they might add, “It’s freezing! They say the cold snap is passing, though.”
”Oh.” And both of us are sad. For it’s undeniably true that had the weather not been so mind-numbingly cold, we would never have spoken to each other, but would have stomped past in silence.

What would we talk about if it were not for the weather? What would rumtumtugger write about in her diary?

And you want to know the funniest thing? It’s so cold, it’s not even freezing. Who said that the English don’t exaggerate?

Yours chilly-ly,
therumtumtugger
xxxx