Colder than a...

My feet are cold. Very cold, actually. And it’s the middle of summer. The middle of summer, and my feet feel like foot-shaped icy-poles.

Cold weather makes me feel like having lots of showers. In this age of water restrictions I guess that’s not cool though. And besides, my shower has one of those water-savey devices which make me think H20 is out to get me, one watery pin-prick at a time. So another shower is out of the question.

You might have guessed that I haven’t decided what this blog is about. You’re not wrong. So far we have covered my intolerance for the slightest air-chill, and my love for showers. So for lack of another idea, here is a story about a time I have been cold before. I know that you’re interested.

Before I lived in Melbourne I was in the lovely coastal town of Torquay, with my anonymous flat-mate Eliza and our pet rat Albert (who lived under the fridge). Our little flat had a lot of local history, seemingly having housed almost everyone in the town at some time or another. Generally when I mentioned my address to a ‘local’,  they had some story to tell about ‘the time I threw a TV off the balcony’ and ‘the time the car-port collapsed on my aunt’. It’s possible that my own story will be less exciting than these, as it’s about ‘the time I thought I was going to die from cold and spores’.

The little town of Torquay, it seems, gets surprisingly chilly in winter. I’m not sure if it’s the wind from the ocean, or the fact that all the tourists have gone home and so there is generally less body warmth in the air. But this chill means business.

Our flat was two-story, and I was lucky enough to have acquired the larger room at the bottom of the stairs. This room had formerly housed two people comfortably, but somehow never seemed to be enough space for me. When I arrived in the house it was summer; which is a magical time in beachy towns and seems to involve nothing but surfing and barbeques. I lived in Summer Bay, and I loved it. Slowly though, as the surf got colder and more aggressive, so too did the weather. And so too my bedroom.

Mushrooms grew out of the floor when it rained.

After a week of excess showering and no sleep (due to cold, as well as fear of spores), I came up with a brilliant plan. At bedtime, I would run into my room and jump from the doorway onto the bed (to avoid getting wet socks). Ideally, everything I needed from that point was already within reaching distance. First I put on my pajamas - sometimes over the top of the clothes I had been wearing. This allowed me to keep any body-heat that I had accumulated over the day, as well as avoid my skin coming into contact with air. From this point I created an intricate system of layers on top of my clothes-pajama base, like parfait. This involved anything up to and including a woolen jumper, tracksuit pants, socks, ugg boots, multiple blankets and beanie.

Under the covers, and dressed in what I believed to be sensible sleeping gear, I began the process of actually sleeping. This usually started by putting the doona over my head and hoping breath would warm up the bed (as well as protect me from spores). I would then shut my eyes very tight, and wait for sleep to come. Sometimes it even did.

The best part about all of this was the dreams I had, due to my eventual over-heating. Big adventure dreams. You know then ones; when you’re a pirate and it’s your job to chase antelope through the Amazon armed with nothing but a bubble-gum dispenser. Usually I would wake up when I ran out of oxygen, at which point I would remove a layer or two. The only problem was that I was so exhausted from oxygen deprivation (from being under the doona) that I may as well have not slept at all.

But at least I was protected from spores.

This tent is where I spent the coldest night of my life, at the Blueprint Music Festival in Ararat. I put this tent up all by myself (it fell down).