cooped up

My three days charging around in the fresh air at the plant centre must have exhausted me, because when I woke up this morning it was twenty to nine, and I didn't have a riotous evening last night to celebrate the end of my working week (scrambled egg on toast, teetotal, in bed by eleven).  The trouble with waking up at gone half past eight when you keep chickens is that after realising what the time is your first thought is that your chickens are still locked in a box.  The cats were keen for their breakfast as well.

It was too cold to do anything outside.  It is a testament to my strong Protestant work ethic that I managed to do so much over the weekend.  Wishing to keep my job, and feeling that if I was being paid to work I should do some, I stuck it out.  Today, left to my own devices, being outside simply seemed too horrid.  I spent half an hour watering the pots in the greenhouse and conservatory, and at the end of that my hands were so cold I couldn't type properly.

The Systems Administrator had to venture out after lunch to cut some more firewood, since we are chewing though our supplies at an alarming rate, and came back indoors after an hour with chattering teeth saying it was no good, it was too cold.  And last night my mother rang about a proposed trip this week to look at the hellebores at Beth Chatto, saying it was too cold for garden visiting, and could we just have lunch instead.

I don't understand why it feels so cold.  According to our weather station it was four degrees outside when I got up, which is not that cold.  The SA said it was because the humidity was so high at ninety per cent, though when I asked why that should make it feel colder neither of us really knew.  We agreed it must be that damp air was a better conductor of heat away from the human body than dry air, or else that tiny beads of moisture condensed from the atmosphere on our skins and then cooled us by evaporation, or both.  Whatever the reason, it felt cold.  Always work from the evidence.  My least favourite rationalists are those who, failing to know the reason behind an observed phenomenon, or observing a phenomenon that does not accord with their accepted theory, argue that the observed phenomenon cannot in fact be the case.

We listened to The World at One with our lunch (more eggs.  We forgot to heat the baked beans up) and grumbled about why the producers thought the Italian election results ranked beneath a long interview with a woman involved in the Liberal Democrat sex scandal, and another interview with a woman who had been involved in a previous Egyptian balloon accident.  Having your leg touched in a hotel bar in Peterborough while surrounded by other people also known to you sounds thoroughly unpleasant on many levels, as does being injured though not killed some time ago in a balloon accident, but  we couldn't see why they merited fifteen minutes on what is supposed to be a flagship news and current affairs programme, ahead of the outlook for the Italian economy, the Euro, and the European banking system.

The cats are all bored with the winter as well, the big tabby alternating between following us around aimlessly, niggling for food he then doesn't eat, and needling Our Ginger.  Roll on the spring.  We all need to get out more.