EDitorial ± 23-Jan-2013

Hottie

Maybe it's my age. I said, Maybe It's My Age. Well, that and the ridiculous hours I sometimes keep. But when the dishwasher's loaded and the Interweb can offer me no more and I skip daintily upstairs to Beddington -- it's great when you're late, yeah? -- something cold attaches itself to me. Something? Some things: my feet. Blinkin' blocks of bloomin' ice.

Empirically (ooh, must remember that one for Letterpress), I should record the hotness/coldness of my plates of meat every 10 mins, say, from 8pm onwards. Then we could plot temperature, T, over time, er, also T. Maybe T-prime, whatever that means. Or little t, otherwise known as cheese on toast. It's still snowy outside and I seem to have lost my drift. Point being that my toes feel like Miles Davis, kind of blue, when I hit the sack, and it's mighty hard to get to sleep when your extremities have stopped responding.

In fact, they're chillier than a little place on Baffin Bay called Amadjuak:

  • Anglicized
  • Mexican
  • Aromatic
  • Dish
  • Just
  • Use
  • Authentic
  • Kidneybeans

No longer. Not no more. Rien ne va plus. Leccy blanket? Nope. Getting to bed earlier AT A SENSIBLE TIME. Nope. Solution was sitting in the cupboard, flopping around like a skinless chicken fillet. HWB, it is. Neither Hawaii Winter Baseball nor Helmert-Wolf Blocking, but a plain ol' hot water bottle.

And don't you think it's a crime
When time after time
People in the bottle
— Gil Scott-Heron, The Bottle

Stick on the kettle, fill 'er up, being sure to tighten that plug, then pop it under the covers. Job done. Furry red cover, splishy waterbed sounds, holds its heat: really is The Gift That Keeps On Giving. That and the still good book light are must-haves when Wilson Pickett's hour is up. Way back when, there was an episode of The Goodies in which one of them -- TBT? -- got up in the morning, unscrewed his HWB and poured himself a fresh cup of tea. Must try that.