Loving It In a Cold Climate

It's cold - I love it when it's cold.
All right, I'll grant you, first thing in the morning you need a bit of warmth to loosen up the getting-out-of-bed muscles but, as for the rest of the time, just let me chill.
I know why I am this way. It's not down to my dad, that's for sure. He definitely didn't have Inuit blood in his veins, more's the pity. If he had eaten more freshly caught, oily fish then he probably wouldn't have keeled over with a heart attack and died when I was five. My mother, now that's a different matter. There's Eskimo somewhere in that 5ft mound of malapropisms, there has to be.
When I was growing up we lived in a succession of what can best be described as Western-style, brick-built igloos.


Our first home - we were the talk of the Poplar Grove housing estate!
In my toddler times we relied on open fires and an arger for heat. In later years we occupied semi-detached snowholes which already had central heating when we moved in. My mother's attitude to lighting the former or switching on the latter was the same - "We can't do that, it will run up the bills!" This was the same logic which brought us, as children, "If we go away on holiday you'll only want to come back again" and "If I give you money you'll only go and spend it". The result was that our homes were always freezing cold and the atmosphere was never helped by mother's insistence on having all the windows open, all year round!
My schooldays certainly did nothing to stop me being forced to acclimatise to Polar conditions. I'm sure there was heating somewhere in the place but it was probably just in the staffroom. It was a gigantic, rambling, Gothic-style collection of buildings built in about 1870 as an orphanage for victims of a cholera epidemic in Small Town. I think they worked on the premise in those days that keeping the whole institution fucking freezing would take the kids' minds off the fact that they wouldn't be going out for Sunday lunch on either Mothers' or Fathers' Day ever again.
My school was one of those God awful public institutions which claimed to build character into the nation's young men by mentally and physically torturing them on a daily basis - and teaching them Latin! The result was, as with nearly all public schools, it turned out an unhealthy proportion of future rapists, murderers and other assorted prisoners, members of the Army, lunatics, tower block snipers and tramps, all suitably equipped for their careers by being immune to the cold. The only other thing we all shared was our full understanding of the importance of the school motto - "Comestiblus Locare, Scoffus Ou Mortem" or................."FIND FOOD THEN EAT IT - OR DIE!"
My inheritance from all this is that I like having the windows open all year round and I like it when it is cold. I can't stand hot houses but that is a bit of a drawback at my age. Most of my friends have young kids and, as they fear the little mites could go down with frostbite or pneumonia if the temperature dips below 70C at any time, they tend to keep their homes about as hot as the surface of the sun! Other people I tend to visit are either at the other end of the age scale or they are girlies. Both of these groups also live in greenhouse conditions, primarily because their circulatory systems are fucked - ever slept with a woman (or a pensioner??!?) who had warm feet?
Being a smoker helps me immeasurably when visiting these people. Because us smokers are these days treated worse than lepers, I can go and stand in the garden to cool off while also enjoying a draw. Hurrah!
Anyway, to draw this moan to a conclusion, I shall confine the hot-blooded and their hothouse homes to Grantham.