If I could type under
my duvet, believe me I would. As it is, I’ve spent many a morning this past
week working in bed, with a duvet and blanket over my legs, laptop on my lap, and
fingerless gloves on my poor frozen crone hands.
Yes, I’m back in the Bulg after my pre-Christmas visit to
the UK* and OHMYGODMAN it’s cold here.
The day after I got back, we had our first snowfall of the
year, followed by low temperatures of -10C and ‘high’ (*cough bullshit cough*) temperatures
of 0. At times like this, I really miss central heating. When I was commuting
to London, it never seemed that hard to get out of bed at 5.20am because the
flat was toasty warm. This past week, I’ve not exited the duvet until 9am. And
if we didn’t have our daily coffee ritual with the neighbours, I might not make
it out even then. After coffee, I promptly return to the duvet to do a couple
of hours work until the woodburner has warmed the house enough for me to leave
the general bed area.
 |
| In my disgust at its early arrival and general abundance, I forgot to take a picture of the snow. However, this image sums it up nicely. |
It’s taken us all a bit by surprise, this ruddy cold. Ordinarily,
I quite like the cold weather and have braved many a Bulgarian winter by now
(including the -23C, three-feet-of-snow disaster movie of 2012), but this just
feels a bit wrong for this time of year. Sure, by January we normally have the
woodburner on all day and evening, and wear thermals whenever we go outside,
but not in the last days of November and early December!
On the plus side, all this cosy, fire-on, not-going-out-ness
is putting me right in the mood for Christmas. Last night we watched The Shop Around the Corner and it made
me want to kick off Christmas DVD Season 2016 a bit early (normal start of
the Christmas DVD Season: 15th December. Not that I have, like, a timetable or
anything). Over the years, I’ve amassed quite a collection of Christmas movies,
on the scale of a mad old woman collecting warts, aprons and cats. I’ve got all
the obvious ones like Scrooged, Elf, A
Christmas Story, Gremlins, Home Alone, Bad Santa, and Die Hard, plus classics like It’s
a Wonderful Life and Meet Me in St
Louis, along with a few leftfield ones like Diner and The Ref. If it’s
got a bit of Christmas in it, I’ll watch it. I’ve even got Love Actually and that’s the worst fucking movie ever made. It’s
practically a Christmas ritual in our house to watch Love Actually while I complain for two hours about how it’s the
worst fucking movie ever made. S’tradition, innit?
In other news, while under the duvet I read The Secret (yes, I know I’m about 10
years behind everyone else), and it made me laugh (at it) and think (quite
seriously) in equal measure. As a result, I’m now visualising a lot and constantly muttering ‘thoughts become things’
like the kind of person you cross the road to avoid. Ah, the joys of random
winter hobbies.
