A Winter's Tale

Lots of my friends have been complaining recently about the cold. Poor heating, presumably - or poor insulation perhaps - causes them to take to their beds with hot water bottles, nightcaps, scarves, mittens and even fur coats, in an attempt to stave off the biting temperatures. I can picture them now – their little red noses poking out from the duvet; icicles forming like miniature diamonds on their brittle eyelashes; their bones chilled to a degree where they feel they could snap.

I hold the dearest sympathy for them – my apartment is so warm that I rarely have to wear any clothes at all whilst at home alone, and it is a more rare event indeed when I have to switch on my heating (even if I knew how to). My gas bills must be the lowest in the western hemisphere. I'm not quite sure why this is, but I suspect it may have something to do with sitting on top of a Chinese restaurant, and being sandwiched between (and beneath) other apartments whose occupants presumably burn faggots in their hearths night and day, winter and summer.

I wasn't always so fortunate, of course. I remember spending Christmas in my brother's North Yorkshire farmhouse one year, and it was so cold that trying to keep warm involved taking a hot bath, fully clothed (and even then, one needed to break the ice off the surface of the water). The situation wasn't helped by my brother's pet goat Gertrude, who insisted on eating the putty from the outside of the window frames, causing all the panes of glass to fall out just as the snow blizzard hit the side of the house. The closest we got to being warm that year was when the howling gale, raging through the glassless windows, dragged the flaming brandy from the top of the withered Christmas pudding and set fire to the tablecloth. That was a treat indeed.

And now I hear that the arrival of an unusually large number of waxwings from Scandinavia heralds an equally unusually cold winter ahead for us. See the picture above - don't you think it looks rather a cross little bird? Maybe that's because it objects to being given a name that sounds more like a beetle than a bird. I'm sure it would prefer to be called the 'Greater-Crested Cilla' or something like that. Anyway, no-one is really sure why these birds have begun to migrate here in such large numbers, but on the Continent these mysterious "irruptions" (as above-normal levels of arrivals are called by the bird-following fraternity) used to prompt superstition and fear amongst the population. In some areas, waxwings were named "plague birds'' because their visits were said to coincide with epidemics (of what type, it is not reported) but in Britain, large numbers have traditionally been linked to a cold, hard winter. Ladbroke's have already heeded this information and have slashed the odds against us having a white Christmas.

Oh crumbs – don't tell me I'll have to put some clothes on at last. It's less than a month to go until the Solstice, remember. Winter draws on.