Little reward

In the days of the Roman Empire, Winter was the season of peace, if only because fighting was impractical when your troops were likely to freeze to death and because you needed the lads to go home and plant the next crop. Winter was for sharpening blades and tending farms, or if you were higher-up, plotting the next campaign.

Winter was a time of tranquility.

It isn’t anymore, of course. War has been a year round occupation since the Middle Ages.

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Yet to me, Winter does seem more peaceful, probably because it’s when so much becomes dormant and all those noisy outdoor activities cease.

The warm months always feel fraught and loud.

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A blanket of snow has a softening, equalizing effect, at least to my way of seeing it.

As I said recently, it covers up all sorts of things you’d rather not see.

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At the same time it brightens the landscape, highlighting edges and surfaces.

Have I sold you on the idea yet?

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During my early childhood in London, my only memory of feeling cold was when, after having a bath, my mother wrapped me in a towel and ran me down the unheated passageway to the kitchen to get dressed in front of the fire.

My father, however, regularly sat huddled before an inadequate gas heater, wearing his hat and coat, complaining bitterly about the bloody English weather.

Though when my mother carelessly served him hot food, he was likely to open a window and put his plate outside to cool on the sill, to her frustrated protestations.

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My father was an only child, afflicted at the age of 5 with the Spanish ‘flu. Thereafter he suffered much with bronchitis and always believed that you caught cold from being cold. He therefore spent his life doing all possible to avoid it. I suspect that his mother fussed over him a good deal, just as, much later my mother did.

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To escape from England, father took a job with UNESCO which took us to Southeast Asia. After six years, I was sent back to boarding school in England during a particularly cold Winter.

And I do remember feeling cold then.

The dormitory where I slept was in the attic of an old manor house. It had probably been the servant’s quarters, back in the day.

The windows rattled in the wind and though I had no less than 7 thicknesses of blanket as well as an eiderdown, I was always cold. There were hot water pipes but sometimes overnight everything froze, so it wasn’t just my imagination!

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Asthma had tormented me until we went to Asia and it now returned. I also got chilblains on my toes that swelled so badly, I could only wear a pair of loose over boots.

The school was on the North Devon coast and on Sundays we were taken for long walks along the cliffs in all but soaking rain.

But my dislike of the school was mostly due to everything else.

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For the two years I spent there, I remember feeling cold all the time, indoors and out. I didn’t like it then and still don’t.

But I love cold weather.

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However, I readily admit that I would like it a whole lot less in different circumstances.

How, for example, are soldiers to survive, never mind fight when their bodies and their equipment is frozen? Bad enough to be in such a constantly terrifying situation without the added sheer misery of it all.

What soft lives we have, those who have not experienced the life of a combat soldier.

And how little reward they get.

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