Cold Comforts

Cold Comforts ©

By

Michael Casey

Forgive me my Polish and Ukrainian readers, if 20cm of snow is called a lot of snow here UK. Cold Comfort is a phrase too, and there is Cold Comfort Farm the book, so that’s something for you to investigate if you think today’s piece is rubbish. Though I could say I’ve been snowed under, which as you know from your English teacher is another English expression.

My small daughter did mention in passing this morning, and in passing could be a very rude expression too. See how words attack your brain with multitudes of meaning. Ok, what did she say? She said English was supposed to be very hard to learn for foreigners, but for her and her sister languages seem quiet easy to learn.

Remember she also speaks Chinese thanks to mum. So she is hard wired for languages, though mum never taught me Chinese, so I speak a bit of French and Spanish to our daughters just to spite my Chinese wife. Speaking of whom she is in Shanghai enjoying a well deserved holiday seeing her own mum.

So while she is far away in Shanghai, I am Home Alone with our teenage daughters and Totoro our female cat. The Cold Comfort I have is that the weather is so cold that the cat does not wake me up to be let out in the middle of the night. My pigs, my daughters never hear her calls, so it is me who has to let the cat out. The cat can now almost say “milk” too when she wants more than the mountains of cat food we have for her. No only milk will do, before she escapes into the night to pretend to belong to several other owners. Apart from these past few nights, as 20cm of frozen snow is too much for even her own fur coat.

I’ve just had a warming coffee before I resume talking to you all, I could be sad as Christmas 2015 was when we decided we’d look for another place and then it was a while before we started to look, and now Christmas 2017 is upon us. Close but no cigar, 2 baths and 4 beds in our price range is hard to find. We did almost get there a few times, remember with my heart and kidneys location of bathrooms or 2^nd toilet is as important as the house location itself. Its cold comfort having 2 toilets if I’d have to climb the stairs 20 times a day to reach it. Cause of death, heart attack brought on by attempting to reach the toilet for his weak kidneys. Though the obituary would be amusing.

Laughter is a comfort always, do you remember when dad wanted to watch the film but did not want to go to the toilet all the time during the film? Yea, I remember. So he threw mum’s poncho over himself and used an empty Polish apple juice bottle to pee into while he continued to watch the film. Luckily he’d only just finished drinking the Polish apple juice, perfect recycling no doubt. But he caught his willy in the bottle, so had go to hospital to have the Polish apple juice bottle removed. No I’m only joking, dad is stupid, but not that stupid.

He filled the bottle up, and then he enjoyed the film so much he even filled a 2^nd Polish apple juice bottle up, with his cloudy apple juice pee. Then he fell asleep. When he woke up he got up too fast and tripped over the poncho tearing it. So he blamed Totoro the cat, he also thought he hadn’t drunk any Polish apple juice, he just thought it was cloudy apple variety. So dad picked up the 2 bottles, that had his own pee in, 4 litres worth and put them back in the fridge.

The next day we had carol singers. I did do carol singing once many a year ago,nearly 50 years ago in fact. Collecting for the Missionaries, but that’s another story. But as for today, when the carol singers came, dad had no change but thought they deserved something. Then he remembered the Polish apple juice which really IS nice. So dad gave the carol singers the 2 bottles of cloudy apple juice to share amongst them. And singing really is thirsty business, so they quickly downed the apple juice, which really was dad’s forgotten pee.

We never ever had carol singers ever again, we did wonder why, dad insisted it was because he’d been so generous they did not want to bother us ever again. And they never did, and dad never did pee in bottles either because in the Spring we found a new house with 2 bathrooms and an added downstairs toilet just for him. But that was cold comfort for the carol singers.