Cold Front

England in March. I sense the gnawing cold even before I leave the dingy confines of Heathrow’s baggage claim. I go outside and the air hits me - crisp and sharp, like a knife on my skin. The hairs up my nostrils stand on end, under assault from the freezing air. I can see my breath rising in great clouds as though I’m a forty-a-day smoker.

Morning arrives and a glance out the window suggests it’s a nice day. The sun is dazzlingly bright and the few clouds in the sky look perfectly painted on, Michelangelo style. Only the bare trees and the snowdrops forcing their heads through the flowerbed suggest the real truth. A sparrow lands on the edge of the stone bird bath to survey the wintry scene.

The lane down to the shops is muddy and hard, set like concrete. I’m shocked by the amount of broken glass on the ground until I realise it’s large shards of ice from the occasional frozen puddle crushed underfoot. Out of the lane and onto the pavement: grey, unyielding and covered in a fine and invisible layer of ice which threatens to send me flying.

Life has swung into reverse. In Singapore I go inside for respite from the heat; now I go inside to get out of the cold. Air conditioning makes way for central heating and suddenly the rules change. In Singapore, condensation is always on the outside of windows and my glasses steam up when I leave the building. Here it’s the opposite. I reach for my cup of tea, realising that if I don’t drink it soon it will be tepid.

I’m sitting on the sheepskin rug in front of the gas fire wearing jeans and a long cable-knit cardigan but I’m still not warm and my feet feel like blocks of ice. I want to go and pee but I know how cold the toilet seat is and I can’t face it. Mother makes a move to switch the fire off. Everyone else is boiling up. The weather is much warmer now - practically tropical, they say - since the snowfall a few weeks ago.

Solution to the cold: fleece boot liners

which my Mum took on a trip to Antarctica!

Says it all really...