Boo boo in select company

Boo boo in select company
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Monday 5 February 2018

Me and the Cold

I sometimes think it is my birth and youth in India that make me feel so cold this year. It is cold with a vengeance this February. I have spend the last three Februaries in England and have got by. My daughter says I moaned loudly all those years too. In even less generous moments she says I am getting older, what did I expect? I know what I expect. A civilised degree of cold, but not this determined, freeze.

   My feet are permanently cold and my toes are various shades of purple. My varicose veins stand up angrily on my ankles and their surrounding skin is also green/ blue. I wear two pairs of woolen socks and today I am wearing a leg-warmer, which my son added to my strategies for surviving. He has also given me a fur hat, which wraps around my ears and buttons under my chin.

   In bed I have two sausage-shaped warm bean bags, two quilts and my Kindle to let me forget the cold. In addition to socks and a jumper.

   I rack up the heat on our central heating to the point when my daughter's face goes pink and she leaves the room. Next year I will have to migrate to warmer places. This won't do. I hate the gloom more than the cold and the wet too more than the cold.

   But today -- I had it! 'In your face,' I told the cold. I rustled up a  long woolen overcoat, woolen socks, jumpers (plural), gloves... and went out for a walk. I'm darned if I'm going to let the weather dictate my lifestyle. I felt I had won something, at the end.

   And then a friend from Kazakhstan phoned. It is minus 13 degrees there, he said. He is Indian, a lot younger than my nearly 83  -- he sounded great. He got me thinking. There are many people in this country who are old and manage to negotiate this weather without fussing. So what is wrong with me? From today on, I am getting out there, snow, sleet or frost. Bring it on!