the big chill

It's been bitterly cold here - absolutely freezing. Bone chillingly cold. I am wearing my snowboarding socks and my snowboarding thermals. If I walk into the back section of the house, where the heating ISN'T, my breath gets taken away. But surely I can cope with this after 5 years of London winters? Or 4 winter seasons in St Anton, Austria as a skibum? Apparently not. Admittedly this is NOT the coldest I've ever been. No. Positively balmy compared to the -26°C I experienced with Ben on Stuben, North Face (down the road from St. Anton) - not factoring in windchill either. My god that was cold. Snowboarding down was just amazing - it was fresh powder with no-one about (who would in such temperatures?)(us) - a rare occurence to have such a pristine slope to ourselves. Going up though, was a different story. The metal chair lifts were exposed, slow and in the shade...the lifties handed out blankets as we got on (I took two - legs and body) and I remember cursing and complaining: "This is not bloody HUMAN! What the hell are we doing?". Getting off at the top of each of the chairlifts - there were 3 to get where we were going - while always a bit of a test on a snowboard, with 2 blankets wrapped around me, was tricky. But I did it. And when I reached the bottom of the run, Ben would ask: "Again?" and I would reply, "Hell yeah!". We had great fun that day. We even managed to take some photographs, which was torturous since I had to take off my gloves! But it was well worth it and character building, of course. Going home was a long process - painful at times. The only part of my body that was exposed was the tip of my nose right under my goggles. I had a neck warmer pulled right up but try as I might, I could not cover that teeny weeny bit. At one point (we were just going as fast as we could to get home) we stopped to assess whether any damage had been done to my nose and Ben, (BLESS HIM!) sucked the tip of my nose back to life! Ha ha. I worked that night in the restaurant with a Rudolf red beacon of a nose. It was worth it for a day I'll never forget.

So no, not that cold. I guess central heating plays a large part in the equation too. We don't have it. Luckily, we have a heat pump, which is pretty fantastic - it does the trick quite fast. Less mess than a fire and not at all smoky. It's just that we don't have a heat pump in every room! Nevermind, I have an electric blanket now, which is something neither Ben, nor I, have ever aspired to buying. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do!