I Surrender

My extremities, they feel the chill

Always have done, always will.

Frozen fingers, frozen toeses.

 And, so too, my little nose is. 

Thankfully, then, one of the presents I received for my recent birthday was these…

Adorable, sheepskin slippers. They are solid, fluffy, bouncy and deep red in colour. They make me feel like a Christmas elf when I wear them. For the last three days, my toeses have been warm, my feet rosie pink instead of ink-blotch blue. I should have bought a pair 57 years ago. 

Today is the first day in ages that my face has felt cold. Today, then, is the day we have capitulated and activated the central heating. Until now we’ve been layering up with jumpers, tights (not Andy), thick socks, our massive fleece hoodies and blankets because heating means bills and bills are going up, up and up. Especially when you are an oil-heating household and have to prop up the likes of oil producers like B.P and Shell, poor things with their barely-there meagre profits. (That was irony. Or bitter sarcasm. Probably both.)

But I’ve had enough now. I am a cold mortal. Our house is an old house - “I’m 170 years old, you know. I remember when ALL this was fields. Oh, it still is….I remember when ALL this was younger fields…”  - and was starting to feel too cold, too - and was that a hint of damp I was beginning to detect in the air? Andy commented that the bath towels weren’t drying out properly, either, not like back in the days of the Great Heatwave of Summer ‘22 when they’d dry out quicker than one could say ‘flame thrower.’ Come to think about it, one didn’t really need a bath towel to dry oneself - one merely stood on the bath mat and let evaporation do the job. 

Some tinkering with the magic wi-fi thermostat, then, and away we go! I can almost hear the house saying, ‘Thank chuff for THAT!’ 

We have always been careful with our heating bills, both for fiscal and environmental reasons. We are not ‘leave it on all day and all night at 20 plus degrees’ people. An hour and a half in the morning, four and a half hours in the evening, and it switches itself off as if by magic when 18 degrees is reached. If it’s especially chilly during the day, I’ll crank up the wood burner. That’ll do for us. Keeps us happy, healthy, ambient and solvent.

I’m too old now, to fret about being cold. Being cold makes me feel miserable. And if I was to be mown down by a runaway cow tomorrow and went to the Great Beyond, I would be thoroughly p*seed off that I hadn’t enjoyed being warm today.