UNLIKE RPB I can put up with cold, whether it’s the lowest temperature from an air conditioner or an ice-cold glass of water or beer at freezing point.
Despite that, you see that extreme winter cold that people across the United States have been dealing with over the past several weeks? I have nothing to do with that.
On reflection, I am so glad that I didn’t bow to the many temptations in younger days to follow the path of lots of my friends and relatives who moved to New York, Canada or England, as was the trend back then and today I feel really sorry for two of my sons and their families, who live in Boston and New York and have to endure one of the worst winters and some of the most bitter-cold weather in decades.
It’s so bad that my four-year-old twin grands in Boston are having to spend as many as three out of their regular five school days at home. Because of this situation, the state is looking at options, such as homework packets, which, if completed and handed in by the children, will be accepted as the equivalent of one or two of the missing school days’ work.
Imagine hundreds of people having to be evacuated from their homes because their roofs are caving in under the weight of tons of accumulated ice; two-way streets made so narrow by large snow banks that they are changed to one-way only; and thousands of commuters unable to get to work because of public transportation being shut down.
Imagine that as I was writing this column Boston was preparing to enjoy temperatures as low as four degrees yesterday morning and as low as minus eight and minus 19 in other parts of the state.
That’s so cold that if some unfortunate Bajan-born man found himself stranded on the road with an urgent need to fire a pee but with nowhere to do so, dropped it behind a tree or on somebody’s paling, when he was done he would possibly have to break off an icicle stretching from his dangling to wherever it landed.
I have experienced some very cold weather in different places in different countries in my time but nothing to compare with what the family is describing on a daily basis and from the report I am seeing nightly on the news channels. I have had some extremely cold days and nights in places like England and Scotland, Canada, Germany and the Falkland Islands, the closest I got to Antarctica, where I could feel the cold penetrating to my bones in spite of the fact that I was dressed from head to toe like an Eskimo in the Arctic Circle.
Fortunately, after a few days or weeks I would have been able to board an aircraft and, within whatever number of hours it took, would be stepping down at Grantley Adams International in warm weather no matter what month it was – January, February, March . . . October, November, December.
Our weather is also the reason why I have refused invitations on top of invitations from both sons to spend a Christmas, any Christmas, in New York and or Boston with them.
Not me and that cold.
Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email [email protected]
