Been on the phone to work colleagues and family in Britain over the past few days and apparently it's very cold.
http//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4457744.stm
It's funny I was talking about different perception of cold and damp in another thread. I notice the temperatures are much the same here in Toronto, but if anything I'm often too hot indoors. Of course one can't mention that to people there and it does sound as though some people are in some distress. If they really do get severe snow and ice it can be very serious (burst water pipes etc).
My sister-in-law says she's been carrying a hot water bottle around the house with her.
I think the dampness has something to do with feeling cold there. Temperatures can be in the upper thirties and you get cold "to the marrow of your bones", where colder temperatures here don't feel that bad.
Yup.....we keep going through the damp barrier as the weather here at the mo is up and down like a yoyo! Wish it would just stay below 25 then everything indoors is toasty warm and you can venture outside without feeling the cold as long as you are wrapped up.
Ah yes, I was talking to my pal down in Devon last night. She's lived there all her life and never known it this cold. They can't seem to get as much heat from the radiators and they're all wearing coats indoors and carrying hot water bottles too. sad
Meanwhile here in sunny but chilly California him indoors is abed with a dose of flu evil
Why oh why do people over here insist on going to work with flu and colds? It's more than socially unacceptable these days, it's downright rude, inconsiderate and dangerous.
Off I go to refill hot water bottles and heat onion soup for the invalid. He will be well by tomorrow or I shall want to know the reason why. smile
I grew up in a damp, clammy house with no heating except for a coal fire in the living room, sans double glazing and listening to the howling wind coming off the Fens, where my dad still lives.
No wonder Pops is going to Oz for five weeks.
Given the present cold, I wondered if anyof the other old codgers remembered the winter of 1947. It was so cold. It was the only year that I remember being allowed to skate on the Serpentine. The streets had been paved with wooden blocks and the tarred. They had dug up the blocks to rebuild the roads and we were burning them because there wasn't enough coal. The smell of burning tar was everywhere.
If you have read Lorna Doone, there was, in the 17th century, a winter so cold that oak trees were splitting with thunderous noise.
Don't remember that London but I do recall the winters in the 50's. Snow piled up at the edge of the pavements so you couldn't see the road, fog and snow, snow , snow. lol
Ah yes, I was talking to my pal down in Devon last night. She's lived there all her life and never known it this cold. They can't seem to get as much heat from the radiators and they're all wearing coats indoors and carrying hot water bottles too. :sad:
Meanwhile here in sunny but chilly California him indoors is abed with a dose of flu :evil:
Why oh why do people over here insist on going to work with flu and colds? It's more than socially unacceptable these days, it's downright rude, inconsiderate and dangerous.
Off I go to refill hot water bottles and heat onion soup for the invalid. He will be well by tomorrow or I shall want to know the reason why. :smile:
Mainly because you can be fired for any reason whatsoever, and if you have a non-sympathetic, even down right despotic boss (like my wife has) your life will be made more of a misery than if you stayed where you should be (in bed) also if you only get 5 days sick a year, you want to save them for when you're dead !!
And my wife gets paid an absolute fortune, the people who work in the warehouse are freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer and it is not illegal, the only thing the employer has to do is make sure they have somewhere to go to the bathroom and make sure they have water.
Ah yes, I was talking to my pal down in Devon last night. She's lived there all her life and never known it this cold. They can't seem to get as much heat from the radiators and they're all wearing coats indoors and carrying hot water bottles too. :sad:
Meanwhile here in sunny but chilly California him indoors is abed with a dose of flu :evil:
Why oh why do people over here insist on going to work with flu and colds? It's more than socially unacceptable these days, it's downright rude, inconsiderate and dangerous.
Off I go to refill hot water bottles and heat onion soup for the invalid. He will be well by tomorrow or I shall want to know the reason why. :smile:
Mainly because you can be fired for any reason whatsoever, and if you have a non-sympathetic, even down right despotic boss (like my wife has) your life will be made more of a misery than if you stayed where you should be (in bed) also if you only get 5 days sick a year, you want to save them for when you're dead !!
And my wife gets paid an absolute fortune, the people who work in the warehouse are freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer and it is not illegal, the only thing the employer has to do is make sure they have somewhere to go to the bathroom and make sure they have water.
Gosh, your wife isn't working with Safeway is she. I'm boycotting them again. This time it's the janitors they won't pay state wages. Last time it was grape pickers. Safeways and Walmart, a drain on every state, using state health insurance rather than providing it. All it comes down to is they make a fortune and I pay their health insurance :evil:
Gosh, when I were a lad..............
I would take a hot water bottle to bed, not one of those new fangled rubber thingies, but an old stone ex-Stotherts of Atherton pop bottle, the kind they use in jug bands!! it had a screw on rubber stopper and you filled it with practically boiling water, for the first hour in bed you couldn't even put your feet on it or you would get 3rd degree burns on your toes. In the morning it was still warm. To find out how cold it was outside the covers, i reached over and ran my fingernails down the single pane window, if ice collected underneath the nail it was cold. I kid you not. We had a coal fire in the back room, and that was it, although each bedroom did have a fireplace we were never allowed to have fires in them, probably 'cos they had been bricked up! Later when smokeless fuels meant the end of buring coal, we had a gas fire put in each of the two downstairs rooms, but we still froze upstairs in winter.
To find out how cold it was outside the covers, i reached over and ran my fingernails down the single pane window, if ice collected underneath the nail it was cold.
I'd managed to suppress that memory until now...
/years of therapy down the drain
Given the present cold, I wondered if anyof the other old codgers remembered the winter of 1947. It was so cold. It was the only year that I remember being allowed to skate on the Serpentine. The streets had been paved with wooden blocks and the tarred. They had dug up the blocks to rebuild the roads and we were burning them because there wasn't enough coal. The smell of burning tar was everywhere.
If you have read Lorna Doone, there was, in the 17th century, a winter so cold that oak trees were splitting with thunderous noise.
That and the last winter we spent in the UK ( 1962/63) were the coldest. In the winter of 47 I was working at a small company in Borehamwood. We were able to keep some of the machines working using small generators. Electricity was cut off at times. Coal was rationed still. as was much of our food. The only warm places were the pubs.
That last winter in the UK I was in Barton-in-the-Clay ( just north of Luton) I worked at ICT in Stevenage (12 miles away). The snow was so bad we were cut off for 3 days and I couldn't get to work. Thats something that never happened in all my 42 years in Ottawa.
And the fog...my sister can't see past herself. Poor baby.
Safeways and Walmart, a drain on every state, using state health insurance rather than providing it. All it comes down to is they make a fortune and I pay their health insurance :evil:
This should give you a luagh then - JibJab takes on Walmart.
http://www.devilducky.com/media/36747/