Andrew Kay: Cold front

I should no doubt be writing about global warming, but sat shivering as we are at Latest HQ it hardly seems appropriate. It’s hard to remember when we last had some consistently good weather.

I knew things were bad when at Easter, I had to wear gloves on stage whilst compering the Brighton and Hove Food and Drink Festival Live Food Show. You could see my breath on the air and people were coming in, not just because they were foodies, but seeking just a little warmth.

Since then it’s been pretty much the same (although since penning this things might have picked up, I really hope they have). A few odd warm days in May do not make a spring and certainly not a summer. By now I should have closeted my long pants and be in my annual selection of shorts.

The worst thing about the weather is not the cold but the collective depression that it seems to create. How moody are we? How tired we are of the cold takes second place to how tired we are of talking about the weather – and here I am doing it.

Of course I should be able to cope – being a ‘northerner’. I grew up in a house without central heating where ice was to be found on the inside of my bedroom window in the morning and dressing was best done under the bedclothes. It was a method that, whilst conserving heat, did mean that one might arrive at school wearing odd socks or with your shirt or jumper inside out.

“By now I should have closeted my long pants and be in my annual selection of shorts”

There was one source of heat, a coal fire in the living room and this would be kept on through the night by covering the last embers with ash from the pan at the bottom of the grate. It was called backing up, a term that now seems to have been adopted by computer geeks.

It worked too, well almost always. You could tell when it hadn’t worked though as mum would bring tea and toast up to my bedroom, something that never normally happened. This would mean that the fire had gone out over night and that downstairs was as cold as a witch’s nipple (another phrase, this time my dad’s).

Mum had great ways of dealing with the cold weather. When it snowed, and it really did snow, there was a simple rule. The buses would have been stopped of course, the journey along Burroughs Lane being deemed far to treacherous for a red and cream double decker – ding ding, room on the top, no spitting on the lower deck – so the three mile journey to school would have to be undertaken on foot. The rule was simple, I would be sent off in my wellington boots, basic black rubber, none of your posh nonsense back then. If and when the snow came up above the top of the wellingtons then I was allowed to turn back.

It seemed fairly reasonable, except that you only really noticed that the snow has reached above the top of your wellingtons when said snow has started to fall in. Given that by this point your toes would be as cold as the temperature outside that snow would simply gather at the foot and form frozen clods around your sock. And those socks would be my walking socks, thick woolly affairs to which the clods would stick and refuse to move.

By the time I had reached home again my feet would be weighed down by pounds of ice attached to my inner footwear and encased in chill black rubber. There were times when it was nigh on impossible to get my foot out of the boot and into the bowl of warm water that mum would pour for the purpose of thawing.

Winters back in my childhood figure in my memory in such a romanticised way. One morning we woke to find that our road was full of cows, escapees from the local farm that gave our life a truly rural feel. Another winter the lake across the road froze so hard that we were able to skate on it, it was quite a sight, like a Victorian engraving, as we set off across the mere in our bob hats and tassled scarves.

So, chilly as I might feel right now as May draws to a close and those cutting winds are still beating the late blossom out of the tress, it’s all relative.

The old adage ne’er cast a clout til May be out never seemed more appropriate.