An open letter …
On talking about the weather
How pompous the callow are. Such foolish proclamations they make. Weather, I can recall declaring, lounging uselessly around our form class one wretched winter’s lunchtime, I’ll never discuss the weather! No, never ever, cooed my friends. So boring. So meaningless. Not when there is politics. Music! Art! The weather, we concurred, was something only old people talked about. Old people and dullards. Because they didn’t have anything more interesting to say. Because it was safe.
And it’s true. To remark upon what a lovely fine day it is to your neighbour across the back fence, or how it’s been bucketing down when you bump into your colleague at the gym, is a way of ensuring you merely skim over life’s surface. A distancer. But what my friends and I were yet too sophomoric to see, was that the weather is also a unifier. That while experience and circumstance will colour world view, are capable of dividing us, weather is something universal. Young or old, rich or poor, we all know what it is to feel the sun gently warm the back of our neck on a snappy July day, the relief of a cooling breeze in the middle of a muggy February.
I see this now and happily trade pleasantries about conditions with the checkout operator, with other parents at the school gate but lately I have come to understand something else, too. That while the weather connects us, is capable of bringing us both fantastic joy and huge misery, of both making our day and ruining our plans, many of us are cushioned from its real cruelties. While we may think we are braving the elements — ducking between car and office on a frigid morning, daringly venturing out for a bracing walk in a storm — our homes are heated, our wardrobes bursting with puffer jackets and merino layers.
The paper was full this week of stories of suffering. A single mother who is forced to burn treated offcuts and still the temperature in her house never gets above 13C. A family of six sharing a double bed so as to keep warm. I’m ashamed to admit that in the past when I’ve read stories like this, I haven’t been as moved as I am by other tales of poverty, tales of hunger, say. When you’re cold there are usually still ways to remedy it, another pair of socks, even a towel in place of a blanket. But when you’re hungry, when the fridge is empty, the cupboards bare, and you’re a long way from payday, there are precious few options. I had forgotten what it is like, though, to live in a truly cold house.
The first days and nights in our new home, old and uninsulated, no heating to speak of, I thought we might freeze quietly to death. On waking in the morning, my breath hanging in a frosty cloud above me, any inch of skin to have escaped from under the covers as if it were no longer a part of me, I found it almost impossible to motivate myself to get out of bed. And once up, once unswaddled, I would huddle miserably in front of our borrowed heater, scorching my shins while it did bugger all to warm anything else. No space in my mind for future plans or creative dreams; debilitated, disheartened, little by little my spirits withered in those Arctic temperatures.
And so when I read those stories last week I felt sick and I felt angry. Houses in other countries I have visited with properly cold winters are properly equipped for it. I think we kid ourselves we live in a more moderate climate than we do. If you can afford to own a rental property, you can afford to insulate it, to install heating. No one deserves to be cold and miserable.
FOLLOWING ON
Kristina has given some thought to the question of where best to write. “Where is that place where procrastination is gone and the light appears? Where will we feverishly work and stay until finished? That place is nowhere except for the most determined. Those with selfdiscipline beyond considered normal. Driven, compulsive, gifted: all of these plus the ability to put life and living on hold for as long as it takes. Who is that? Who can do that? What is needed? It’s a team of workers doing things for them: the meals, the house, the kids, the hubby, the co-ordinating.”