The winter of our discontent
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It's cold. It's been cold for months. At the time of writing, we're at the end of winter, so the fact that it's been cold for months shouldn't be a big surprise. In this country, winter is several months of cold, with mild bookends. Any time the weather here does anything that isn't mediocre, it's headline news. But this winter seems to have gone on for much longer.
Normally I don't mind winter. I dislike the cold as much as anyone, but I view the heat in a similar manner. As someone with fair hair, I burn easily (and quickly!) in the sun. I figure that at least when I'm cold I can warm up. Cooling down is much harder to do. This winter, cooling down hasn't been an issue. I've known fridges that don't cool down this much.
And now I'm sitting here shivering. I've had to put on a sweater. Our central heating runs on a timer and as I write this, it's quite late in the evening and it has already turned itself off until morning. Normally this isn't a problem, but it's fiendishly cold this evening. It's been cold at work too until very recently. I'm convinced my productivity has gone down in the last few months purely because I've had to stop what I'm doing every now and again to sit on my hands until my fingers got warm enough to use the keyboard. I'm normally quite good at typing, but with cold hands, I end up hitting the wrong keys and it looks like I've taken dictation from someone wearing a gag.
The cold weather has also done wonders for the roads. Rather than being flat and boring, the potholes have given them a wonderfully textured look. Most of them appear to have been strafed by a fighter plane and pockmarked with craters. It's caused by general fatigue in the road surface, but is exacerbated by moisture in the tarmac freezing and expanding to a point where the surface cracks. It seems especially noticeable on routes frequented by heavily loaded buses and/or lorries, where the roads struggle to cope with the added pressure. It does, however, make riding the bus that little bit more interesting, as it bounces along. On some roads it's like going cross country on a penny-farthing.
In theory, spring should be here by now. And it has attempted to show itself a few times in the last couple of weeks. A few days ago it was warm and sunny all day. It didn't stick around for long, but I suppose sometimes even seasons need a few practice runs before they're ready to go the distance.
The trouble is that we're now in that odd part of the year where it's occasionally too cold in the morning to leave the house without a coat, but too warm in the evening to wear one for the journey home. And because the weather is so random, it's a gamble either way. Tomorrow, for example, I might leave my coat behind and brave the morning chill, but knowing my luck, it probably won't warm up and I'll shiver all the way home too. On the bright side, it might cancel out the effect of some of the potholes.