\u201cBaby, it\u2019s cold outside\u2019\u2019\u2014and so it was in 1949 when Ella Fitzgerald sang the song and the temperature reached 10 degrees below, but it hasn\u2019t been that cold in west Dorset for the last three years or more. Of course, I realise everything\u2019s relative. As I write, we haven\u2019t had to suffer (yet) the nasty snowstorms currently being endured by our colleagues \u2018up North\u2019, but I can\u2019t remember the last time my little bird bath had a thin film of ice on top or the car wipers stuck to the windscreen. It\u2019s so chilly today that I\u2019m going to start the petrol strimmer\u2014not to strim the weeds but to warm my hands on the engine. This morning, I even wore two pairs of socks in my boots! Oh yes, it\u2019s hard \u2018down South\u2019…<\/p>\n
For those of us lucky enough to live in the mild Southwest, these minor events (along with wearing a wooly hat in bed and trying with difficulty to type emails with gloves) are the nearest indications we get for a National Severe Weather Warning. So how best to stay warm in these unusually icy times without breaking the bank?<\/p>\n
For a start, you can sit round a fire\u2014a real fire mind you, with real flames and fuel. In the olden days we used to collect tons of paper from all those unwanted mailshots shoved through our letter box. You remember all the catalogues selling you life insurance, pressure cookers or donations to homes for cats? Well, guess what? They don\u2019t exist as paper anymore because they\u2019ve all migrated to the online garbage heap. And you can\u2019t burn any of that rubbishy spam in your email inbox unless you set fire to your Ipad. This is NOT a good idea because it\u2019ll fill your house with nasty toxic fumes of melted plastic and make a horrid mess of your dining room table. Besides which, you might lose half of your Facebook settings (shock, horror!) though they\u2019d probably be safe in your personal \u2018cloud\u2019.<\/p>\n
Now there\u2019s a thought… Can you burn a personal digital \u2018cloud\u2019 I wonder? Is cloud vapour non-flammable (i.e. like water) or is it digitised silicon and therefore useful as a fossil fuel like butane gas? Answers on a real postcard please, and if enough people send me their postcards, I can burn them in my fireplace.<\/p>\n
I digress (as I often do)…<\/p>\n
Keeping warm is a useful side effect of undertaking any sort of exercise… like jogging to work or hopping on one leg to school and thereby gaining several non-academic degrees at the same time. In the off chance that our road gets blocked with snow, I\u2019m spending hours of work teaching our lurcher how to haul a dog sled (mush, mush etc), but since his lack of obedience is legendary, he\u2019ll probably drag me off to Yeovil at 50 mph when all I want to do is pop into Bridport LIDL. Either that or I\u2019ll get bored sitting on the sled while he sniffs at every lamp post and road sign on the A3066.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t have anything meaningful to perform as an exercise, then remember that entirely pointless physical activity will keep you warm just as effectively. Try a game of tennis against yourself or flapping your arms enthusiastically while trying to fly off Golden Cap. You might just as well try to re-arrange the gravel on Chesil beach but it doesn\u2019t really matter\u2014you will stay warmer. You could even combine burning with exercise by sawing up Aunt Sarah\u2019s horrid old kitchen cupboard (the one you\u2019ve been longing to get rid of for years) and then putting the remnants onto your living room fire. A double winner! Just make sure the same Aunt isn\u2019t coming round unexpectedly to tea…<\/p>\n
Other ways of keeping warm include collective human activity. Of course this might involve one on one exercise which I will leave to your own imagination (children might be reading; although in today\u2019s non-print digital media world, children reading anything is increasingly unlikely). It\u2019s still a fact that a group of people can be much more energy efficient than many single individuals. For example, if it\u2019s really cold, gather all the neighbours into your kitchen and share a collective cooking experience. The room will get really hot with so many people and you\u2019ll save money by sharing the same stove. Also, hugging each other can be an energy saving and socially warming experience but please be careful whom you choose to hug as you might end up being arrested. And please avoid hugging Mr Johnson of number 97, the Grove, as he has appalling BO.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re still feeling the cold, then try moving home. I admit that this is rather a drastic action but \u2018needs must\u2019 in an emergency. Start with a local move to anywhere that sounds as if it might be less chilly. I suggest Warmwell near Dorchester or Burnham-on-sea and perhaps Chard in Somerset. If those places don\u2019t banish the icy cold, you could always fly south to somewhere like Morocco or Mauritius but I realise it could be a long Monday morning commute. I reckon you\u2019ll need something faster than a dog sled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cBaby, it\u2019s cold outside\u2019\u2019\u2014and so it was in 1949 when Ella Fitzgerald sang the song and the temperature reached 10 degrees below, but it hasn\u2019t been that cold in west Dorset for the last three years or more. Of course, I realise everything\u2019s relative. As I write, we haven\u2019t had to suffer (yet) the nasty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-2104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-laterally-speaking","tag-humphrey-walwyn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}