A to Z of winter blues
It’s officially winter. We know that because it’s minus freeze your balls off, it’s constantly dark, and you’re sleeping in a puffa jacket. As soon as this time comes around each year, you can guarantee the following things . . .
Absolutely enormous power bills. It’s only fair that, if you can’t get to Bali, Bali should come to you. Even if you’re living off canned tomatoes the week before pay day.
Black. You hit winter and suddenly everyone starts wearing head-to-toe black. It’s like we’ve all suddenly started working in fashion and referring to each other as ‘‘babes’’.
Christmas in July Parties. White women everywhere rejoice at the chance to down Baileys, gorge on supermarket sausage rolls and tearfully belt out Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You. While wearing a slutty Santa outfit.
Darkness at 3pm. You’re yawning, stretching, feeling it’s almost time for bed when you realise they’re still playing daytime TV cooking shows and you really are turning into your mum.
Everything feeling like the biggest struggle ever. Weet-Bix or toast? Who knows. You certainly don’t. Pass the Baileys.
Furbies – not the cute yet terrifying children’s toy. Rather women like me who haven’t shaved their legs in four months and are OK with that because, hey, it’s winter. It’s insulation.
Going 30 on the motorway. You’re one of a long conga line of cars trailing behind one battered Toyota Vitz that’s crawling up the motorway like a stoned sloth. It’s me, by the way. I’m just driving to the abso-goddam-lutely terrifying conditions.
Hypochondriac breakdowns – that one person who’ll turn their desk into an operating table of vitamin bottles, tissues, eyedrops, surgical gloves, and hospital-grade hand sanitiser. Keels over with flu on the second day of winter.
Indecisive coughing by Karen from finance. Sounds like a cross between someone clearing their throat and a small rodent dying in their mouth. It’s a half-arsed, grandstanding little thing which Karen won’t get checked but annoys the hell out of everyone else to the point that they take bets on who’s going to throw the stapler at her.
Julie from finance. Keeps five tissues up her sleeve for no conceivable reason.
Karen from finance. Also keeps five tissues up her sleeves, but she does it specifically to remind everyone exactly how sick she is.
Last-minute flakes. Friends who are like, ‘‘OMG, we will totally catch up on Friday after work.’’ And at 4.55pm, when it’s still 4 degrees, remember it’s their mother’s dog’s birthday.
Morning chills. The winter replacement for morning sex.
Never-ending bitching from your friends about how their life is ending. It always happens in winter. Halt them in their tracks by responding to every complaint with: ‘‘Jesus sees your pain.’’
Owl-patterned bed socks. Compulsory nighttime attire. Pandas and kittens are also accepted.
Pity Olympics contenders. As soon as you mention you might have a sore throat, they jump in with illness-bragging. ‘‘Oh, I had a cold last winter too, my nipples went blue and fell off from frostbite and now I have to wear special shirts for victims of Post-Nipple Frostbite Trauma. I run a support group on Facebook . . .’’
Quivering, flu mask-clad people who spray you with Dettol every time you sneeze. Get revenge by leaving a trail of used tissues around their seat.
Roasted veges for dinner. Never has it been so acceptable for ‘‘cooking’’ to literally just be dousing something in oil and burning it.
Sunshine. Remember that? No, no-one does. Least of all Christchurch.
Tissue guardians. They always have tissues on their desk, and guard them with a ferocity that makes Judith Collins look like a Care Bear.
Ugg boot bonanza. These shoes maintain an appeal more mystifying than canned cheese. But come winter, you’ll see them everywhere. Supposedly the ultimate fusion of winter style and comfort . . . if your idea of style is a shoe designed by the 2 Dollar Shop in collaboration with meltdown-era Britney.
Vitamin snobs. Those people who, when you get sick, will swoop in to helpfully remind you that if you had just taken powdered Unicorn ball sack supplements you’d never be in this mess.
Winter blues. The ever-present gloom that reminds you that you hate winter, this is hell, it will never end, your life is over, and you’re going to die cold, alone and wearing ugly owl socks.
Xerosis. The technical term for that dry feeling you get around your eyes and mouth that makes you feel like your eyeballs were out all of last night boozing and doing lines off a stripper’s bum. (You wish. The wildest thing you’ve done in weeks is buy powdered unicorn balls supplements.)
Your mum. Who is now calling every other morning to ask if you need some pea soup.
Zealots, converts and devotees, who insist on coming in and ‘‘powering through’’, despite having one lung, bits dropping off, and are the colour of Karen’s spirulina. What’s the only thing that everyone in the office gets out of this trooper’s heroic efforts? Pneumonia.