Winter woes: The cold snap revives winter traditions in our home - Kevin Page

As the cooler weather sets in, so do various winter traditions, like buying yet another pair of gloves.

Where we are at the moment there’s been a bit of a cold snap.

Naturally, this has hastened in some of the cold weather traditions we follow in our humble household.

It’s almost like a series of little games we end up playing each year.

The first of these involves Mrs P complaining constantly that her hands are cold. To emphasise this point she then chases me around the house in the hope she can place the aforementioned frozen hands somewhere upon my body.

My bare stomach and/or chest are her favoured sites. She also has a habit of leaving it till very late at night – just as I am about to drop off into a deep sleep – before she mounts her attack.

Many is the time, I’m sure, our neighbours have been woken by my screams of anguish. I presume Mrs P’s hoots of laughter at the same time have also left them wondering what on earth is going on at our place.

This year I thought the fact I had lost somewhere in the vicinity of 15kg since we’ve been travelling round in our caravan might earn me some sort of dispensation.

By which I mean I’m carrying significantly less blubber at the moment so I can certainly vouch for the fact my newly skinny (comparatively) frame is already chilled to the bone and she doesn’t need to give me any late-night electric shock to emphasise the point.

Or so you’d think. I believe the expression is “Falling on deaf ears”. As in that’s what my protests fell on and she did it regardless.

And don’t even get me started on her cold feet! It’s like double torture at bedtime. Do women do a course in it or something? I bet there’s heaps of blokes reading this and nodding their heads in agreement.

Anyway.

When all this happens, it is a signal for me to follow my part of the cold snap tradition.

I go and buy her some woollen gloves from Farmers or the like to keep her hands from getting cold.

I regard it as a somewhat pointless purchase – otherwise known as a complete waste of money and time – because I know for sure she will lose one of the gloves within a week of me buying them.

It happens every year.

And wouldn’t you know it, eight times out of 10 it’s the left-handed glove she loses. She has a drawer full of useless right-handed gloves just sitting there, waiting hopefully for a partner. It’s like a dating service for desperate singles.

Eventually, she convinces me she needs a really “good” pair of gloves. Naturally, I still want to avoid the Curse of the Frozen Extremities, so I relent and off she goes to buy some more.

By winter’s end, she’ll be on first-name terms with the shop girls at Farmers. Come to think of it, I bet they know all the other women in town on a first-name basis too.

But I digress.

So then we move on to other “traditions”. Like getting the chimney swept in our log burner.

Over the years I’ve got into a good routine with this and we get it done every year. It saves a lot of hassle down the road, makes the wood burn more efficiently and is a lot less smoky.

I can tell you from experience that not everyone follows the same routine.

Take the lady I visited just the other day as part of my other job, writing life stories.

Her life story is as fascinating and intriguing as the house is old and we’ve been sitting there chatting for a couple of hours in front of a toasty warm fire when I need to answer a call of nature.

The lavatory is 20 miles down one long passageway, turn left at the crossroads then a further five miles to the west wing where it’s the fourth door on the left. If you get my drift.

Eventually, I retrace my steps. I’m approaching the last hallway when the lady of the house suddenly races across in front of me with a saucepan full of water.

Apparently something has gone wrong up in the chimney and the smoke can’t get out so it’s slowly filling the house.

Obviously the lady has seen this before and as I re-enter the room she pours the pot of water on to the embers, extinguishing the fire with a hiss.

By all accounts it happens when it starts to get a bit chilly, she says. She’ll get someone out to look at it.

In the meantime, without the fire, it will be a bit of a cold night.

Luckily she’s bought a new pair of gloves to keep her hands warm, she says.

She just bought them from Farmers.