How Not to Formicate

My internal body thermostat is broken. It’s a problem. This is what happens:

Mostly I’m fine
Then
My feet freeze from the toes inwards in a sensation reminiscent of a paddling in the North Sea not wearing sufficient Wellington-ness.
Then
My face becomes rosy and generally glowing like an embarrassed lady from a Victorian novel.
I glow like and embarrassed lady from a Victorian novel.
My breasts decide that since they are the most important part of me they’ll go on double-glow duty, and since there are two of them they decide to go on quadruple glow duty like a collection of ladies in a Victorian novel gossiping about the size of their husbands’ cummerbunds.
Meanwhile my knees and upper shins are fine, a sort of balmy spring afternoon Edwardian novel about the great outdoors manner of fine.
My toes continue to freeze like a novel of unspecified vintage about polar exploration.

I’ve told the doctor. Her solution was to remove some blood. I’m assuming that she felt that all this glowing and Victorian-ness was due to an excess of blood. And the removal thereof was a Victorian style solution. She had no leeches. I’m quite glad about that.

It all makes it difficult to know what to wear of a morning. This is what I’ve come up with (working up from the floor region) :
Twenty pairs of thermal walking socks (on each foot)
Jeans or legwarmers (rainbow striped)
A cummerbund and bustle
Nothing
A pair of pre-cooled coconut shells
nothing
A scarf
A gel-filled face mask
A balaclava
A straw hat with a jaunty collection of peonies and a puce ribbon.

The doctor believes that it is a case of Raynaulds Syndrome meets PMS meets the Perimenopause. I’ve just looked it up on Wikipedia and it informs me that it might be a case of formication. If only.

How Not to Resolve – Or Lent vs New Year (Lent 3 – New Year 2)

Today, in case it passed you by, is the first day of Lent. Otherwise known in the trade as Ash Wednesday. It’s all terribly like New Year except without the parties. And painful shoes. And the snogging inebriated friends. The friends. Not me. I didn’t dare get drunk this last New Years – the danger of my taking someone’s husband home would have been too great.

Today is the first day of Lent. It’s all terribly like New Year because of all that resolution stuff. Lent is the soft version of New Year. It only lasts 40 days as opposed to 365 days, or, in the case of New Year’s resolutions, 10 days.

This year it is particularly handy for those, like myself, who are given to resolution. Because just as one fails the New Year ones – Lo! Where should we find ourselves but bang up against the next big resolution calendar event. Convenient eh?

So here are my resolutions –

Stop putting my coat in the fridge by mistake.
Stop putting my boots in the freezer, whether by mistake or on purpose.
Remember where I am going whilst traversing roundabouts.
Remember that roundabouts are for going around rather than traversing.
Put all my underwear in alphabetical order.
Put all my outerwear in numerical order (except for those items already in the freezer)
Stop thinking about sex.
Stop thinking about love.
Stop thinking.
Put everything in the house that is not actually attached to a wall, screwed to the floor or over ten foot tall into Anthea-esque baskets.
Weave a basket sufficiently large to put the car in.
Find the car.


So, for 40 days and 40 nights I must do the above. It’s not going to be easy. Obviously. Especially all that basket stuff.

But the sheer anticipatory joy of Easter Sunday will keep me going. For verily on that day I will once more be able to freeze coats, make much disorder, bump crazily across roundabouts, lose the car and think about sex. I might give the last one a miss.

Oh fuck, I’ve broken that one already. Never mind there’s always baskets.

How to Use Fiction and not Science to Fix the Freezer (or Not)

Something happened. I’m not sure how. But it could have been carelessness. Or it could have been the power cut. Many things, but mostly pregnancies, have been blamed on these two culprits. This was a case of ice trying to rule the world.

I noticed it first last night. The freezer door would not shut. Upon further examination it transpired that instead of the usual freezer contents: pizzas that are so thin on cheese that no one will eat them, blackcurrants from the bumper crop six years ago, the year before lasts’ chocolate mousse left over from a party, ice packs for purple feet, ice cream that is all sort of frosty on top, you know, the general collection of totally inedible stuff, there was ice. And only ice. Big white and slightly scary ice. Ice so large that it was creeping out and trying to reach the tumble dryer for some sort of ice/heat party.

This, I thought, was a problem. For two good reasons. One, how was I going to cook those blackcurrants that I had been meaning to turn into a delicious blackcurrant cake for the last six years? Two, how was I going to close the door? And three (ok three good reasons) since the door was open then the freezer motor was going completely mad thinking that it was its sole and crucial responsibility to bring the rest of the house down to freezer temperature.

Reason three won. Mostly because the beloved has a bit of a thing about how much electricity freezers use. Luckily the beloved is flying to Canada (to speak at conference about sustainability) using aviation fuel instead of electricity. But he’s coming back. On Thursday. And will not be happy to find the whole house turned into a freezer using about a million times more electricity than a normal freezer fiasco.

So, a plan was needed. The obvious sprung to mind. Turn off the freezer. Not so simple as it seemed. The freezer is attached to the fridge. To be precise the fridge is on top of the freezer and attached. Turn one off and the other one goes off. (It’s a metaphor for marriage; every house should have one.) The fridge is full of food we actually want to eat. That needs to be cold.

A rethink needed. I racked my brains for a solution. Being a bit of a traditionalist I looked on the bookshelves for a solution. You know, a book called ‘Freezer Monsters and How to Win’ or ‘Is Your House Being Taken Over By the Freezer?’ or ‘Come to Terms With Your Ice In Twelve Easy Steps’. Nothing. How odd. But my eye finally alighted on a helpful guide book. It advocated the use of a towel in any given emergency. Or even better, it transpired, as I read on, 42 towels. I have only 12 towels so decided to settle for just one for the moment. I left the other ones together to breed in the hope that in the morning I would discover 42 or more.

I held my towel. I approached the freezer. Quickly I cunningly shoved the towel between the fridge and freezer doors. It draped in a satisfying manner over the ajarness of the freezer door. The writer of that guide knew a thing or two, I thought. This was definitely going to stop my house from reaching sub-zero temperatures and using all the electricity available to the western half of Cardiff.

Everything was fine. The problem was solved. Until the physicist tried to open the fridge door. The towel fell off.

‘What’s this towel doing here Mum?’
I explained all of the above re my advice from the book.

‘Why don’t you just get a knife and cut away the ice?’
I explained all of the above again.

She took a knife. Attacked the ice monster with the ferocity only a victim of A level mania can muster.

Why is it that children never believe a word one says?

‘It’s not working.’

I explained all of the above again.

‘I know, I’ll heat the knife.’

Physicists, honestly. She boiled a kettle. She poured boiling water into a jug. She heated the knife.

‘It’s not working.’

I explained all of the above again. She spilled the jug of water. Grabbed my towel and used it to mop up.

She turned to me in despair.

‘Have you got another towel?’ I redeemed a towel from the pile of fornicating towels and handed it to her. She shoved the towel between the fridge and freezer doors. It draped in a satisfying manner over the ajarness of the freezer door.

‘There,’ she said, quite pleased at this solution.

‘Well done dear.’

A triumph of fiction over science I think.