C-C-C-C-COLD...!

I suppose that it's only to be expected that, when you escape to somewhere warm (Oh, did I not mention that...? ;-) ) for a couple of weeks, at a time when the place you live in is just moving into the coldest part of the year, then it's going to feel a lot, lot colder when you drag yourself back home and are suddenly coming face-to-face with the pitch black mornings and evenings, and you find that the thermometer is struggling to crawl above zero on an almost daily basis.

Of course, I'm exaggerating for borderline "comedy" effect.

It's not been that cold… well, at least not all of the time, anyway...

It was just keeping the sun off my ears...

After all, I walked around for pretty much all of the time on my holidays - perhaps slightly eccentrically - wearing the woollen jacket that I bought in M&S specifically for the holiday (well, it had zip-up inside pockets - which is my main criteria for a travelling jacket when I'm potentially crossing over to the other side of the tracks), even when the temperatures did get towards the satisfyingly reasonable and caused me to hide my ears from the burning effects of the sun.

Although, thinking about it now, I never did actually get to wear that light jumper I packed "just in case" the weather got a little inclement - because even the legendary Alistair Cook used to write pieces about how chilly the Bay Area can get when those sea fogs roll in, and he was not wrong.

Once upon a long ago, after my first adventure in that neck of the woods, I was mocked mercilessly by one of m'colleagues for having bought what was believed to be the only black souvenir sweatshirt that it was possible to buy in that part of the world, but it seems that this was merely the start of a trend, and my dour, melancholic countenance has pretty much adorned every image of me taken in those parts ever since.

Another piece of this pre-planning was because, apart from our visits in February, on the other side of the see-saw that is the December Solstice, we had little knowledge of quite what it was going to be like in those places in the month of November, so it's always wise to "be prepared" and take an extra layer or two, "just in case..."

Although it's not as if America doesn't have shops or anything, is it...?

However, lots of local folk did remark when we were there about just how cold it was, despite our Derbyshire blood telling us otherwise, and there were several misty mornings, and days, and places which might be described as tending towards the "chilly" if you were being forced to come up with an apt expression to describe the day once the fog engulfed you.

But these things are relative, obviously, and a "chilly" day in California could seem like the heights of summer in Derbyshire, so our expectations of shivering and general unpleasantness when we got home in mid-November were not exactly unfounded, and we weren't exactly looking forward to it as we got aboard our flight home.

Of course, when we did arrive home, things were actually rather milder than expected for a time, and all those dire warnings that we made to each other, that we might "really feel the chill" didn't really come to much, especially as feet of snow then got deposited across much of those very United States that we'd just vacated.

At least we felt reasonably warm, if only for a day or two until we had to get up very early whilst it was still dark outside and drag ourselves back through the commute and into our offices and the vagaries of other people's central heating settings and tendency to leave outside doors wide open whatever the temperature might be.

But it's not just that, I suppose.

I know that I sometimes burble on - again (I think) for "comedy" effect - about getting old, but this year I really have been feeling the shivers cutting deeply into my bones as I move about the house.

Strangely, not so much so when I'm outside or when I'm driving, but at home I'm really beginning to feel the chill.

Perhaps I'm just too mean to turn up the thermostat to a respectable level…? Or maybe I believe that keeping the temperatures lower around Blogfordshire Towers might just suppress the S.U.R.A. just a little and give me some breathing space to deal with it…?

All I know is, over the past week or so, I've really been feeling the cold…

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr……!!!!