You can’t use the term ‘bucketing down’ for snow, as you can for rain and sleet or even ‘p---ing down’. ‘Fluttering down fast’? ‘Driving downwards like a fast hit shuttlecock’? Whichever you choose, that’s what’s happening now outside and the sky is full of it. The temperature is hovering around minus 3 and that’s not good.It’s not good because it doesn’t kill off all the little bugs and nasties, doesn’t help the plant life and gives rise to epidemics of flu and the like. It’s not mere bravado that has us wishing for low temperatures like minus 25 or so, every so often. It’s absolutely necessary. And it’s deceptive. After the initial onslaught, the body gets used to it and that’s where the danger lies – in over-confidence. Then the chills come and you’re off for a week.
There’s a contrast between men’s and women’s approaches. A young woman will often go without hat but will always wear gloves – a young man the other way around. Same for the fur coats [increasingly acrylic nowadays]. The men generally have the fur inside, the women outside. Women go for long scarves, the men for functional items.
The traditional Russian hat still can’t be beaten but there aren’t many of the under 40s who’d wear one. The black, woollen, knitted cap is the way to go. I myself choose that way, with the fur-lined hood up if the wind’s up outside. I also have fur mittens of a thick variety for when it dips to minus 30 or so. This is much rarer than you might think and generally, it’s around a nice ambient minus 10 and this is not being facetious.
Being a continental climate, minus 10 here is about plus 3 or 4 in Britain in terms of body effect. I recall one day at Hadrian’s Wall, at 06:00 in November when I almost literally froze to death. I wasn’t that cold again until I tried to work on my car in the carpark in minus 37 one morning here.
Which brings me to the car. If it kicks over in the morning, you offer a silent prayer if you’re that way inclined and things go smoothly and safely for the day. Trouble is, when you have a car, you’re generally dressed more lightly and if something goes wrong, such as leaving your keys in it and the doors automatically locking after you, then you’re in real trouble. You’d have about 25 minutes before hypothermia began its inexorable setting in. Always, always, there’s the possibility of such things lurking at the back of the mind.
It happened that way on the road to the airport and there was no choice but to abandon the car, engine still running and catch another car back home for the spare keys. But that’s another story.
Nice post. I can almost feel the cold. Especially what I always find the worst bit about it being cold which is trying to do up stiff and often wet shoelaces with cold and stiff hands. Good post.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Tiberius. The wet shoe laces biz is not our problem - it's a very dry cold here.
ReplyDeleteLove the pic and the post. I, too, can almost feel it! Here in Sicily in the daytime it would pass for summer in Britain at the moment. The evenings are colder, though. What I can't get over is how reluctant people are to switch on the heating here, and the houses and apartments are cold, being built for the summer with their tiled floors, etc. It's actually illegal in Italy to heat your home to above 20 C.
ReplyDeleteWhyever would it be illegal? To stop the mortar from melting or what?
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