Zambolis apartments

Zambolis apartments
For your holidays in Chania

Saturday 22 December 2012

Cold (Κρύο)

As I was cooking this morning, the house felt warm. Perhaps it's because I was moving around. But when I sat down with the whole family at lunchtime to eat, I felt cold - so cold that I ate quickly in the hope that this act would warm me up. That didn't happen, so after I gulped down all my food, I moved into the bedroom where I keep my computer. Right now as I write, I'm freezing in my own home. But as I think and type, I don't feel the cold. Keeping yourself occupied stops you from pre-occupying your mind with how cold it is. I could take a blanket and cover my legs (they seem to be the coldest part of my body), but you can't move around easily when you are huddled up in a blanket. I move around a lot: I forget my camera in another room, I want to find a book, I need to check a pot or pan, I nibble on a piece of bread or cheese, inter alia.

We don't use the central heating in our house even though our boiler has heating oil. That's for yiayia; she doesn't have a wood fire like us, and she has to use something to keep her warm. She heats her house in complete oblivion to our situation. What do you tell an 88-year-old who lived through the war and saw her father and brother shot dead by the Nazis? Nothing. We light the wood fire at night when we know everyone will be at home - right now, some of us are in, others are out, and those that come in will leave after having their lunch, so we won't be back home together until late. There's no point in lighting the fire for one person, or even two people. We need to be alotgether, so we can get our money's worth.

The kids don't complain about the cold at all. They don't even think about it. At their tender ages, they are used to it. It's cold, as it always has been. What's new? When I ask them if they're cold, they say they aren't. But I feel cold, I tell them. But I don't feel cold, they tell me. I wonder if they are pretending. Maybe I'm just spoilt, because I remember a time when we never needed to be cold. We just pressed the button and the house warmed up in less than a quarter of an hour. Now the house never really warms up. Only half of it. The living room is warm, but the rest is just OK. Except the bathroom. That's freezing. Must be all the tiles.

My son finished his Christmas homework this afternoon, which consisted of writing a summary of one of his favorite books. He chose a Julia Donaldson title: Charlie Cook's Favorite Book. He wanted me to help him, so I told him to come into the room where I was working. Without a second word, he slipped under the blankets on my side of the bed and began writing. (He doesn't really need any help from his mother for his homework, but he always says he does because he knows I'll give him a kick-start.) He's already sorted out a mechanism to protect himself against the cold, since that's what he's used to, I suppose, when there is no heating working in the house. That's maybe why he doesn't  feel the cold in the first place.

My husband came into the room. Shall I light the fire? he asked me. But we'll all be in and out for the next two hours, I reminded him. He looked at his son, huddled under the blankets, knees bent to support his books as he did homework, and then he asked me again: Shall I light the fire? Before I said anything, my son said YES! Well, I guess it's really cold then, if he says so.

Of course, it's not really THAT cold where we are: it's about 10 degrees Celsius outdoors at the moment. I don't know what the temperature is indoors: when you feel cold, you don't need to consult a gadget to tell you if it's cold. But it's much much colder in other parts of Greece; in the north, the temperatures go into the minuses. Cretan winters are relatively mild. But they are still cold. Just not that cold. And the cold doesn't last as long as it does in other parts of the world. What''s more, at least I can be absolutely positive that when the weather does warm up again, it's gonna stay that way.

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5 comments:

  1. We didn't buy oil this year. We're using electric units and our own wood from out trees that were pruned last spring. The fireplace is the mains source of heat. It's different for us this year too, more difficult this way but as you mentioned, the winters are short. oh and ...our bathrooms are frigid!

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  2. 10ºC surely feels cold on a Mediterranean island, especially in high humidity and windy conditions. Here in central Europe we've had a freezing week of ice and snow... I'm wrapped in a warm blanket myself as I type this :-)

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  3. I'm surprised the heat from Yiayia's apartment doesn't rise and heat your own - we make it through most of the winter without heat, even when it's -20something, because the lady downstairs keeps her apartment tropically hot and heat rises (at least, that's my theory). I notice if she's away visiting her daughter in Moncton because the apartment is chillier. I usually only put the heat on a few times a winter, and not always on the coldest days - it's been hovering around the zero mark lately, after being between -15 and -20 a week or so ago, and I had the heat on in the bedroom two nights ago, simply because Mary was away, Chris hadn't come to bed yet, and my extremities were numb. I'm often frozen at the office, because they keep the heat at 22C but it's not hot enough - I leave my own heat cranked, but even so my hands are often numb. Better than last winter, when they were renovating and there was a hole in my wall covered in plastic where my window used to be.

    I grew up in a home where we heated every room all of the time, and married someone who grew up in a family where you only heat the room you're in, so it's been a bit of an adjustment. I was miserable last time I went to my in-laws because I forgot to bring slippers with me and their floors were painfully cold. They've been painfully cold for seven years, so I should know better, but for some reason I feel like I'd look silly wearing slippers at someone else's home and, well, pride goeth before a fall!

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  4. I just had to reboot our wood fire. I lost track of it reading too many blogs! We have had temps BELOW freezing for 3 nights now. The weatherman says a "high" is coming. That should keep the temps above zero. (Fahrenheit, of course) We have about a foot of snow on the ground. But....I am grateful. We really needed the moisture. Snow is two important things to us here in the Rockies,, WATER and JOBS.
    I am all alone here in the cabin, except for the dogs and cats, that is. I have to keep the fire going these days while hubby is at work. I like to think of Crete, at least in the warmer times, Maria!

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