The cold winds will blow…

I absolutely hate winter…

Yes I know we don’t get really cold or freezing temperatures here, but I just loathe the short dark days, so what cold weather we do get seems all the more unpleasant. Our houses are constructed for warm or even hot temperatures, with high ceilings and – in very old properties – thick walls. But the months January to late March are periods to be endured, as far as I’m concerned. Now I know that this attitude is seen as bloody weird by many people. There’s a chap in my office, who is otherwise a decent and highly intelligent person, who conversely despises summer. In fact he hates it so much he uses his annual leave to decamp to colder climes like Scandinavia, Scotland and on one occasion Antarctica. He finds my dislike of winter as weird as I find his icicle-hugging fixation.

The coldest I have ever been was during my short – but not short enough – time spent in Canada, where I was first employed after graduating. I lived in a small town in central Ontario and, during the deepest part of winter, I experienced outside temperatures of minus 15 Celsius… and believe me, that is bloody cold. Happily the buildings, including my apartment, were all centrally-heated and thus very warm and comfortable. But the moment you stepped outside… it really did feel like a life-threatening situation. So cold that one of my work colleagues informed me that, should I feel inclined to spit on the ground, as soon as I did so my saliva would freeze before hitting the sidewalk beneath. Now I’m not normally in the habit of al fresco expectorating, but I did give it a go and… yes it’s quite true, it pinged audibly off the frozen road beneath my rather disgusting gobb.

I have also obviously experienced the other extremes of very high temperatures – but I find I can handle these and am rarely, if ever, discomforted by them.

I’ve just been chatting on the phone with an old friend who asked me if I had seen this year’s panto at the Manoel Theatre. Well no I haven’t and indeed am unlikely to. He told me his family had very much enjoyed it and I’m sure, since it was produced by Masquerade, it was of a very high standard.

However panto, as a means of theatrical entertainment, rather leaves me cold. Added to which are the kids – at whom the whole thing is targeted – squealing at the proceedings on stage and generally behaving like… well kids. Plus the fact that, since some clever bugger ruined the seating arrangements at the Manoel Theatre, it has become totally user unfriendly. So, until they decide to restore the central aisle… and I can’t see this lot ever admitting that they have made a major cock-up, they can whistle for my patronage.

Regarding panto, I should mention one rather important caveat. Although these days, in my late middle-age I find them tiresome, when much younger I did very much enjoy the pantos that the MADC produced in the late 1970s and 1980s.

These were all in the manner of the British panto tradition, complete with cross-dressing and a spectacular transformation scene. However, that was then – this is now. And, as Muriel Spark’s literary creation, Jean Brody, once memorably remarked: “For people who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.”