It is cold! ❄

 

Well it is that time of year again, the skies darken early, nobody can be bothered to go outside, the weather forecast makes you wonder why we did not learn to hibernate and hide away.

For these who are not from the fine isles of Great Britain there is one thing that you will work out very quickly on your first visit, everybody talks about the weather. This is the way we break up the awkward silence and start with a bit of small talk. What is the only thing that everybody is experiencing at the same time and can be used as a sure fire way to start a conversation, well it is the current weather. During winter there is no exception to this, its cold wet and horrible what better conversation starter do you need? In one normal average day, I had a chain of people telling me how cold it is outside from the postman and the checkout operator in the petrol station to the receptionist at work and my colleagues. All that everybody mentioned was how cold it is!

My other half has a habit of saying, “it’s fucking freezing” to the extent if it is not mentioned over the course of on evening I think they might be ill and need medical attention urgently. This pretty much the most common set of words said with in our household during the winter. Sod saying hello or the normal greeting when returning from work, on no forget “oh hello dear how was your day?” and replace it with “it’s fucking freezing” uttered thought chattering teeth and a full body shiver. Other events worthy of mentioning, what about waking up in the morning, alarm pierces the our slumber and with only just one arm reaching out in to the void fumbling to hit the snooze button it is enough to tell “it’s fucking freezing” out there. Talking about the week’s weather forecast and seeing numbers under every day are met by a slight variation of the standard phrase in the way of “it’s going to be fucking freezing” followed by a feeling of chilled depression to come. You would have thought with the amount of times it was mentioned that we lived north of the Arctic Circle not relatively warm and tame South England.

Heating, I try putting off until the latest possible moment every year, as it is too bloody expensive here in the UK. We always have a debate whether it is too early to put it on a month before we finally really do need to turn it on to stop the icicles growing in the kitchen any further. Now this is not just because in a tight arse and never want to spent a penny but holy shit covered in gold flakes has it gone up in the last few months, all you have to do it look at the news with all the doom and gloom stories posted up with unrelenting pace every day.

Talking of being too bloody expensive, these greedy energy companies are taking the piss! I have received a letter and countless emails from my supplier with the same theme “how to save money on your energy bill”. Well I can tell you an easy way I can achieve this, stop making it bloody expensive. I really do not need a pointless waste of tree floating in my letterbox telling me that if I put insulation in my loft my house will be warmer when you have tied me in to yearlong contract at above market rate! What about that one company telling their clients to do star jumps and cuddle up with your pets. Well thanks for that I am sure that my shivering dog is going to add so much warmth and make up the difference in temperature while the owners of the energy company jet off to warmer climates for the winter on all the money they have stacked up sourced from us, cheers!

On a final note closing note with all this talk of cold and ranting at energy companies, why does everything sold or advertised during the winter months have a covering of snow on it when the UK gets absolutely bugger all snow unless you reside in Scotland or you happen to be alive and functioning during that one day when we might be a flake or two falling in the street outside. You would think that will all the snow pictured that we lived in Alaska or Canada with meters of snow falling weekly with regularity. So far this winter all we have had is the irritating thin sheet of ice covering your car in the early morning just when you have overslept and are in a rush and required you to warm up your car, spray with de-icer and scrape like a crazy person until you can see out of your windows. 

Sod it I’m putting the heating on, it’s fucking freezing!