This WINTER I am keeping my BODY warm, not the whole house.

 

In Winter I wear wool and keep close to the fire. When I was a child, Winter mornings formed ice on the inside of my bedroom windows. The bedroom was freezing. The wintry parts of my childhood were focused on keeping myself warm. Woollen scarves, gloves, boots and duffel coats were vital. The lesson I offer for this Winter when heating bills are rising, is to focus on keeping your body warm. A warm house is a luxury. A warm body is a necessity.

I wear warm slippers indoors, with warm socks (long woollen stockings worn over short socks to protect the wool). My several layers of clothing include a woollen sweater. Sometimes two. In the evening I add a scarf to protect my neck, even indoors.

The sun is setting as I write this, and I have just filled a hot water bottle for my wife. I have brought down our dressing gowns (towelling bathrobes) to keep in the warmth from our necks down to our calves. We are seated beside a fire, drinking hot tea and eating cookies: carbohydrate fuel to warm the body, a hot water bottle to warm the chest, and a towelling robe to keep the heat in. 

Until mid-November the temperatures were mild. Today is a true December day calling for Winter Measures to keep warm. To keep our bodies warm.

My British childhood in the 1950s was chilly. We had the privilege of owning our own house after the war, with half an acre of garden. A detached house in a wintry garden means that the corner bedroom has at least two (in my case it was three) outside walls. A previous owner had added a room downstairs, big enough for his Freemason buddies to play snooker on two full-sized billiard tables, and my bedroom overlooked the huge flat roof of that snooker room. From the age of seven, I helped my father clear the snow off that roof with shovels: melted snow = water = heavy weight and the risk of a collapsed ceiling in the sitting room below. We had to sweep the roof of snow (and occasionally of rain water) to protect that flat roof. From the age of twelve I swept and shovelled that huge sitting-room roof alone, while my father was working overseas. I hated snow!

Heating with a fuel or gas boiler (or a modern heat pump) certainly provides a comfortable environment, but my childhood reminds me that central heating is a modern luxury that we do not NEED. We live too warm, pollute too much, spend too extravagantly. We can easily economize and live healthy if we focus on keeping our bodies warm instead of heating the whole house. Stay warm and healthy, my friends, and KEEP DANCING !

I only experienced this sort of snow when I lived in the mountains of Afghanistan. By then, in the 1970s, the adventure was exciting: we were working for UNICEF in a mountain village cut off for 6 months of the year by snow, with packs of wolves roaming around our mud house at night.