Operation Greenhouse

I'm having a retro moment - it's all in my head of course - where I might add, the best sensations live. It's Saturday night, I've come in from the cold which has come to whoop our asses from the east; The Beast from the East to be exact and it ain't in a partying mood.   Bitterly cold winds from Siberia are menacingly whistling around the damp streets of West Hamstead; We're lucky to have made it home at all.   Hair still wettish from the swimming pool - where The Lish has turned a watery corner and is now able to jump into the pool without aid (Hooray!) -  we open the door to a roasty toasty home.  I stop to check I am actually at the right address.  Then I hear it: a supremely self-pitying sound of a sniffle.  The Silverback is unwell everybody.  Call an ambulance!  Call the BBC!  Get the editor of The Times to hold the front page!  And when he isn't well he turns into the polar opposite of his usual Tundra temperature-loving self.  No, tonight you can happily sit in a G-string and vest in any room of the house such is the average current inside temperature.  Under no other circumstances would I ever be allowed to have a house warm enough to grow pineapples in.  But hey, I am not complaining.  I'm in heaven.  It's shitty, dark and damp outside and I'm sitting tapping this drivel out in my shorts.

Adding to the lusciousness of it all is The Lish herself, come to join us in the humid tropics. Not one to waste the hot occasion, The Silverback has put on a load of washing which is now steaming in the heat. Since he isn't well - did I say? The Silverback is ill, he is too weak to fight his TV corner so Lish Losh gets to watch old school cartoons (Frosty The Snowman....how ironic!) while Sausage Fingers languishes on the couch as if just having awoken from a coma.  And all of a sudden, I'm transported to my own childhood when Saturdays were all about sitting around together each sort of doing our own thing but united in silent comfort and familiarity.

Many a weekend I have sat in my jim jams watching Tom & Jerry while mum ironed in the glow of the lights shooting out of the TV.  I didn't know it then but those evenings, it turns out, are some of the happiest days of my life!!  And tonight for 5 minutes - I'm transported back there. It feels nice.

I guess, in the simplest way, the best things in life really are (almost) free (electricity and gas bill aside).