Chilly Complaints

Maybe over-reacting a little...

Cold weather can do a lot of things to your body. It can cause hypothermia to set in, it can make your fingers drop off due to frostbite or it can make you shiver in such a way that looks like you’re dancing to extremely high tempo rave music.

Another effect that cold weather can have on us, according to my made up physiology, takes part in the speech centres of our brains, making us unable to start a conversation without mentioning the ambient temperature. Either that or it forces you to continually state the lack of heat to every person you meet, which will usually be met with a nod of agreement, but also a slight air of disappointment as they were just about to proclaim the same thing. I’m pretty sure it’s a medical condition known as Colditus Proclaimus, a genetic mutation that first appeared in primates and through the power of evolution, has subsequently been passed onto everyone in the human species.

The word used is always the word ‘cold’ or ‘freezing’ and never seems to vary from my observations of the condition. As a hopefully articulate wordsmith, it exasperates me when people frequently articulate the same, invariable word persistently, minimizing their cerebral thesaurus from an Encylopedia of eloquence to a small lump of minimal vocabulary. Referring to a normal thesaurus, I find many other synonyms for the word cold which never seem to be used that often, such as ‘frosty’, ‘wintry’ or ‘arctic’. Come on people, let’s endeavour to expand our psychological lexicon and proclaim words of splendour rather than those of monotony. What would Shakespeare say?

A funny thing about cold weather is what some people do in a vain attempt to warm up. Some strangle themselves with scarves and others wear coloured bobble hats on their heads, just in case it snows and someone needs to find them. Other people dance around like they’re trying to put out a fire and others rub their arms hoping that friction will bring them their required heat. I’m a big fan of the ‘fire stomping’ dance, which makes me look rather strange in public, although compared to the wearers of the luminous bobble hats, I’m inconspicuous.

Some people never seem to stop complaining about the cold. If the temperature is noticeably lower than yesterday, they declare it like it’s an inevitable apocalypse. I’m not sure these people with the serious form of Colditus Proclaimus condition realise that most humans are equipped with sensory nerves on our skin so we too can detect changes in temperature. Either that or they’re big mouthed people who love the sound of their own voices.

Sometimes, the condition can have complications and lead to another condition known as Snowius Wonderus, whereby the afflicted being to wonder uncontrollably about the possibility of snow whenever cold weather is around. This condition is infectious and contact with humans should be avoided until the weather warms up.  Stay indoors and don’t look out the window.