You may not have noticed, depending on how regularly you’re using your daily exercise allowance, but it’s really cold. Temperatures have plunged – along with our spirits – to accompany this next layer of Covid restrictions, and with January and February stretching ahead, they won’t be warming anytime soon.
Just as well then, that cold weather is secretly far superior to its more popular colleague.
Here are a few things you’ll understand if you actually really like the cold…
1. It’s invigorating
‘Invigorating’ often comes with a price. Cold showers are ‘invigorating’, and we’d still rather not tolerate them. But a brisk walk on a Monday morning clad in ultra-woolly scarf and bobble hat – that’s the kind of invigorating we can get on board with.
2. It makes indoors so much nicer
Whether you call it hygge, koselig, or just being snug as a bug in a rug, cold conditions are most fun when you’re secured against them, and extreme cosiness makes life more enjoyable and the short days more tolerable.
Chill winter evenings are wonderful when observed from the warmth behind your windows, safe in the slightly spiteful knowledge that there are people out there struggling against the elements, and you’re not one of them.
3. Winter fashion is the best
It would seem to follow logically that wearing more clothes gives your look more to work with, and for men in particular, the cold weather combos of jackets, coats, scarves, gloves and boots are infinitely more interesting than the shirt-and-shorts go-to that dominates every summer holiday.
You can even hide your failing gym routine beneath layers of shape-disguising fabric. Keeping fit in a pandemic is hard, and frankly, we’d rather not.
4. You might just hate the heat
Everyone says they want high temperatures, but do you remember the record-breaking heatwave that engulfed Western Europe in August 2020? It was a sticky, sweaty mess of lethargy, claustrophobia and discomfort, and scorching temperatures only come into their own while lying by a swimming pool.
If it gets too cold you can add another sweater, but if it gets too hot, you’re pretty much stuck with it. Most people have central heating. Only a select few own air con.
5. Cold air tastes better
It really does! There’s something about the crispness of winter air that sits well in the throat, and acts as a barrier to unpleasant smells. Roadside drains and rotting food can assault the senses during warm weather, but the cold keeps everything fresh, cool, and odour-free.
6. It’s an excuse to indulge
Piping hot bubble baths. Roaring fires and onesies. Enormous knitted blankets. From steamy stews to stodgy dinners, even winter food is indulgent. New Year’s resolutions be damned, it’s cold and we want chocolate.
7. There’s no pressure to do anything
It’s indoorsy weather for an indoorsy era, and if you like summer sun, there’d be no barbecues or beach breaks right now whatever the forecast. Winter is an easier season to self-isolate, if just because of what you’re not missing. If only humans hibernated.
