Woohoo! Half way there! I didn’t think I had any willpower where a drop of the amber nectar was concerned, but it turns out I do! I’ve surprised myself.
We’ve had a lovely weekend at the beach so I didn’t get chance to blog yesterday as we got back, had a shower and went straight back out for dinner with the in-laws.
I took a jacket with me, just in case it got a little chilly, but not really thinking that I’d need it as it was such a hot day. I was FREEZING at a certain point!! My hands went cold and I had to borrow a scarf off the mother in-law. Seeing that everyone else was in t-shirts or sleeveless tops I stuck out like a saw thumb. I realised my problem immediately…I didn’t have my beer coat on…damn it!
Now, this is something every English girl knows well. When you go out on a Friday or Saturday night, in December especially, you wear the flimsiest top you can get your hands on and wouldn’t be seen dead in a coat or jacket because:
1. You cannot be doing with queuing up to hang your coat up,
2. You cannot be doing with queuing up to get your coat back at the end of the night (if you remember to get it, that is),
3. You don’t need one anyway because alcohol warms you up and gives you a nice, snug beer coat.
I remember one such night vividly as it was just before Christmas and about -10°C out with a wind chill of at least 20° below that. For the reasons described above, I obviously didn’t take a coat out with me. So, we went to a club called Miss Moneypenny’s and had a boogie, a few drinkypoos as you do and fun and frolics were had by all.
Now, at a certain point the end of the night came and there was none of this waiting-to-get-your-coat malarkey so we left to hop into a taxi. Being so close to Christmas this turned out to be a little more difficult than expected. It was the Saturday before Christmas and the whole world was out celebrating…and trying to find taxis at the exact same time we left the club.
My beer coat probably lasted all of 5 minutes before the cold started to wear through to my bones and no amount of hugging myself would warm me up. No taxis were waiting and those that were had already been booked. We tried walking further up the road but, strangely, we weren’t the only ones who had thought of this. At this point I think hypothermia was starting to set it and my lips were turning blue.
In the end we had to walk quite a way to the nearest hotel and call a taxi from the warmth of a reception area. I was shaking so violently I just couldn’t stop and as soon as I got back home, about an hour after leaving the club, I turned on the heating, stuck about 3 layers of jumpers on, made myself a boiling hot cup of tea and crawled under the duvet and went to bed. I’m lucky I didn’t die of exposure! And do you know something? I’ve never since gone out without a coat and I can’t stand being cold.
I always remember going to visit my granny, who lived just down the road from us at the time and her offering us a bit of whiskey in our tea to ‘warm your bones’ when it was freezing out. I have to say it did make us sweat, but she was also a person who felt the cold and usually had the heating on AND the fire on full blast. It was like an oven in there and we were being slowly cooked. Needless to say the whiskey in the tea went down a treat on a Baltic evening.
I’ve since found out that alcohol actually thins the blood so, if anything, it makes you colder…it’s just that you’re so trollied that you don’t feel it.
No Grog Blog 