Was it only weeks ago that I was blithely regaling overseas friends with tales of our never-ending Indian Summer? Oh, how the warm have fallen. Winter arrived on cue, with biting breath and blatant disregard for the fact that Autumn had missed the party.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s cold.<\/p>\n
Very cold.<\/p>\n
Not sub-freezing or anything and very unimpressive to anyone who\u2019s just emerged from a Northern Hemisphere winter, but still. The shock of going from long, warm days in the low 20s to short, cold days in the low teens is much greater when you don\u2019t get a mellow period in between.<\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s my excuse and I\u2019m sticking to it. It\u2019s not that we\u2019re not a hardy lot, nosirree. Just fortunate.<\/p>\n
Imagine my surprise, then, when I was blown through the drycleaner\u2019s front door this morning to discover him standing there \u2013 right in front of the freezing blast \u2013 wearing a singlet. Not a wife-beater or anything, but a tank top nonetheless. I tried not to say anything. Chances were he\u2019d heard a lot of \u2018goodness me, you must be crazy<\/s> cold\u2019 in the hour since he\u2019d opened. So I tried. I really did.<\/p>\n
But I couldn\u2019t help myself.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoodness me, aren\u2019t you cold?\u201d says I, throwing out the line that won me \u2018wittiest opening gambit\u2019 at the last Small Talk awards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m from New Zealand,\u201d he answered, as though that said it all.<\/p>\n
Mr3, resplendent in the corduroy jacket known by Fam. Fibro as \u2018The Furry Bear\u2019 because that\u2019s what every child who wears it looks like, peered out from behind his pram\u2019s plastic windbreak, removed the scarf from the bottom half of his face, and looked up into the man\u2019s face with a raised eyebrow.<\/p>\n
It was enough to provoke a further response.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a paper run when I was a kid,\u201d said the meaty, blokey drycleaner, directly to Mr3. \u201cI would go out in the morning and the frost would crunch under my feet. I used to love watching my breath blowing hot into the cold. The air smelt so new and fresh\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
He turned his attention back to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing has ever felt cold since.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr3 nodded. I nodded.<\/p>\n
Poetry at the Dry Cleaners. True story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Was it only weeks ago that I was blithely regaling overseas friends with tales of our never-ending Indian Summer? Oh, how the warm have fallen. Winter arrived on cue, with biting breath and blatant disregard for the fact that Autumn had missed the party. It\u2019s cold. Very cold. Not sub-freezing or anything and very unimpressive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[714],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pink-fibro-life","tag-author-life"],"yoast_head":"\n