I forget

I've been here two years, not long enough for me to remember this, so I get to write the same blog post about the same moan! It is fucking cold!!!!

I know, I know, every summer I complain about the heat and everyone gets to write and tell me that I should have expected it. Every summer I lie in bed at night, the temperature dropping to a mere 30°, the fan barely moving the warm air around the room as I melt. And every Summer I forget what is going to happen in a couple of months. It is fucking cold!!!

Now, I realise that it isn't really cold - the temperature falls to 7°, which isn't really cold - but it is! It isn't cold if you have a house/flat that is prepared for the cold but we live in a flat that is prepared for the heat. The house is designed to let heat out. There are huge gaps in the windows, there are gaps around the doors, the whole flat is tiled - this flat is cool in the middle of Summer. But come Winter it is cold. There isn't anywhere in the flat that is warm and there are few ways of getting warm. We have a gas heater that attempts to heat the room that it sits in (heaven forbid it attempts to heat the whole flat) but most of that heat sneaks out the windows. The only way to get really warm is to stand under the shower and hope that eventually the heat gets through to the actual bone marrow - because that is how cold you get. Not just an "on the surface" cold, all the way down to your bone marrow. As I sit here typing my spine is radiating cold, all through my body. And there is no escape.

I get out of bed in the morning. Put on a vest/undershirt, a sweatshirt, a shirt, a cardigan, my jacket, a waterproof jacket, a scarf, a hat, a pair of gloves, underpants, trousers, two pairs of socks and I'm ready to lose body heat through the day. There isn't a room in the school that isn't open to the elements. From the minute I start work it is a running battle to keep whatever heat I managed to take from my bed with me. I just have to hope that I make it through the day - until I can come home and climb under several thermal blankets and hold Maria tight, trying to suck any heat out of her body.

Thank god for my illness! There are actual moments when I am sweating because I am too hot! These are the moments I relish! Except I know, I will never be this hot again, never be this warm. Until June/July. Come then, expect long posts about how hot it is!! But until then, know, it is fucking cold!!!

Comments

[Vanessa]

I hear you. It never drops below 15 degrees here, but with no windows, just spaces, outside shower, no heating, adobe mud walls, and no jacket, plus a daytime temperature of 22, you can feel that cold.

But I realised I had whinged on about it a tad too much, when my mum posted me thermal undies, angora socks and fur coat.

Not. That. Cold.

Thinking right now about going back to the UK, and desperately aware that I will Freeeeeeeeze.

[Vanessa]

And yet ... wait a minute -- you're not THAT far north of the equator - is it winter there?
We're just coming into summer for christmas -- for some reason I assumed you guys were the same.