To be fair, we’ve had it pretty good this year so far. Until recently, we’ve been experiencing winter weather that my mother likes to call ‘mild’ – which, while nice for us and our dislike of wearing woolly tights, is probably pretty worrying for polar bears and our other northern neighbours.
Today though, there’s signs that the cold is about to set in and we’re going to do a Michael Fish and predict that we’re about three days away from the country going full-Narnia. With the turn in weather though, there's a whole bunch of minor annoyances that you’d totally forgotten you needed to worry about that are about to rear their ugly heads again.
Barry, the train station’s central heating guy, will take his job too seriously
It takes a special kind of bright spark to think it’s a good idea to turn the central heating up to 11 in a place where people are bundled up in a thick coats, scarves and woolly hats and yet, every year, on the first cold day, the heating guy comes into work at his local train and/or bus station, rubs his hands in glee and blasts the building with enough hot air to melt the last sorry few ice caps that are still floating around up in the arctic.
Sorry polar bears, but no-one stands in the way of Barry carrying his job out with aplomb.
You’ll realise you have no appropriate footwear
Because for six months of the year, buying a pair of shoes that cost £25 from a website that features models who look like they moonlight as background actors on The Only Way Is Essex, is just fine. If they fall apart, the worst that happens is you have to dodge the dog poo as you walk home barefoot.
Now it’s cold though, it turns out your mum might be right about ‘sensible footwear’ being a good idea. Turns out pleather plus imitation rubber actually equals a cold soggy foot that might as well have frostbite. Or whatever the urban pansy equivalent is.
You’ll have the same conversation 70 times
Already in the work kitchen you have to put up with conversational gems from Sandra like ‘Any plans this weekend?’ and ‘Roll on Friday!’ Now it’s cold, she’s added another feather to her already socially redundant hat, ‘Oooh it’s cold today, isn’t it?’ Yes Sandra. Yes it is.
What sort of response would you like to a statement of such bleeding obviousness that a three year old could have said it? You’ll probably respond with a ‘Ooh yes’ while miming a shivering movement, hating yourself and Sandra from the very core of your being. Thanks, Sandra. Thanks a fucking lot.
There’ll be talk of snow
Which will start in the Daily Express when they promise ‘a white out’, ‘up to 30 feet of snow to fall this weekend’ and ‘winds of up to 700 mph’. By lunchtime, Sandra will have got well into the spirit and will spend the afternoon looking nervously out the window muttering something about ‘snow tires’ for her car and her need to buy extra ‘supplies’ because one time her sister’s brother’s dog in Canada got snowed in for a whole week and had to live off Tracker bars and icicles and only survived because his cousin’s friend’s brother met Bear Grylls one time.
ROLL ON SUMMER.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.