...Where I Don't Complain About The Cold

 

No need to use the bridges over the canals...we can just walk over!

Anyone who has read this blog for a while will know that I'm not a fan of the winter. Give me heat, humidity, the sweaty damp extremes of the tropics any time...just don't give me winter. Problem with that obviously is that we live in Europe where the winters are getting more extreme and if climate change reaches its seemingly inevitable conclusion, we will eventually be chipping ice off the windscreens from November until March every year.

However...we didn't really have a winter over here until about 10 days ago. The weather wizards had predicted this would be a "severe winter" with temperatures dropping to an estimated -23C!! Bah humbug I declared, and then bugger me if Mother Nature didn't open that big fridge door in the sky, with the mercury dropping to a record low of -22.9C a couple of days ago!! It's never been so cold in the Netherlands before. The good news is that we only had one day of very light snow, meaning the outdoor ice skating rinks are enjoying perfect conditions. Dry and extremely cold, the ice is dense and uniform and ideal for skating. We bought the kids some new skates (they outgrow them every year) and even Holger decided to treat himself to a decent pair.

Beautiful blue skies and sunshine have tempted them out onto the ice almost every day, and we're lucky in that the rink is right behind our house. I tell you, nothing makes kids fall asleep more quickly at night than racing home from a busy day at school to skate in the freezing cold for 2 hours, followed by dinner and a hot bath.

And me? Well, despite the fact that it looks lovely outside the temp is regularly -10 to -15 in the mornings and only moves up a couple of degrees throughout the day, so I'm hiding inside as much as possible. Tomorrow I'm taking my slippers to work because the floors in the office are so cold that by lunch time I'm numb from the waist down, and gusts of wind force blasts of icy air in through the wall sockets!! But I am definitely not complaining.