Stoat - Where?

Now Is The Winter Of My Discontent

Two and a half months ago I was complaining that I was too hot and didn’t have an air-conditioner. Then, you couldn’t blink without breaking into a sweat and I cursed every hot, muggy, sultry day and a job that made me wear a collar and tie. How naive we are when we’re young! In fact, not only did the grass not turn out to be greener in winter, it’s not even green at all, more like snow-covered and white. I used to say I’d rather be too cold than too hot, but Ricky Gervais had it right on Extras, too much of anything is rubbish. Winter has set in and I’m discontented.

I’ve had to give up on half the apartment because it’s impossible to keep any warmth in both rooms at the same time. Ridiculously, the best insulation I seem to have is the paper sliding door that partitions the two main rooms. It is quite literally paper-thin and replete with holes, but at least allows the space heater I’ve stolen from Trevor to make one area of the sleeping room bearable. Even so, I can still see my breath when I wake up in the morning, which was always pretty fun when you were young, but is slightly worrying when you’re lying in bed and have memories of pneumonia. I guess I’ll have to actually go and buy a heater of my own once he’s back from Thailand. The best thing I can say about the walls is that they keep the wind out, a benefit largely mitigated by the drafty sliding doors to the balcony. Last week I washed some clothes that took 6 days to dry fully and that was in the ‘warm’ room.

The kitchen, or ‘frozen wasteland’, has become the place I have to run through to get to the shower and back. This morning, when I picked up my bag to go to work, it still had the snow on it from last night’s journey home, despite the fact that it’d been inside for about 11 hours. It’s so cold in the kitchen that it is warmer inside my fridge than outside! I’d heard this story before, but would have sworn it was apocryphal did I now not keep my milk fresh by putting it on top of the fridge. Even the freezer is only a little colder and that’s only because we haven’t fully dropped into minus temperatures outside yet, something which is due to happen sometime this week.

I’m told that being cold now will only make me appreciate the warmth I have when I have a proper home, but an appreciation in warmth right now would suit me much better. A previous life plan of mine was to spend some time in Russia and make use of the seven years I spent learning the language, but if I’m barely coping at these temperatures I don’t know how I’d live with minus ‘ridiculous’. For the time being, I’m just going to have to get used to sleeping in clothes and hope that it warms up at least a little sometime soon. But I’m not holding my breath (and I have the condensation to prove it!)…