SEX IN A COLD CLIMATE

Normally I’m a fun-loving kind of gal. I like playing mummies and daddies. I like doing the matrimonial polka. I like taking a turn on the hobbyhorse. 

I say normally, because there are three exceptions to this rule. These are a) during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy; b) during any episode of d&v but especially when it's that motherfucker Norovirus; c) when it’s cold.

There is NO WAY I’m lifting up my petticoats and/or traditional cotton winceyette full-length long-sleeved nightdress* in this weather.  I like my body the way it is, thanks very much, not all blue and puffy and lifeless. As it happens, I think my partner feels the same way. Yesterday he bought a Dreamland luxury super-king-size heated mattress cover, which has five settings, including a super-fast pre-heat option, a dual control unit that allows each side of the bed to be set at different temperatures, an all-night timer, an elasticated skirt, and an extra foot warmth section. Which says it all. 

You see, there was a time when an electric blanket that you could leave-on-all-night would have been a diabolical health and safety hazard, if you know what I mean.  

It helps neither of us that my personal hygiene takes a nosedive in the cold.

Take a shower? Are you crazy?  Why not water-board myself in the face with jugs of liquid nitrogen? Why not drill myself a bathing hole in the eastern Antarctica ice mass? Listen, I can't even extend a bare arm into the shower cubicle to turn the water on. I say water, but it's not water, not really. It is the Icy Ejaculate of the Antichrist. (Sometimes I try disassociating myself from my arm. No no no, I say to myself, it doesn’t matter that there are horizontal jets of satanic spume pounding against your skin, because it isn’t your arm!! It is a joke arm, a prosthetic limb. Just look at it dangling there, white and pimply, with shameful little brown hairs standing on end, ha ha ha, ha ha ha!!!) 

I will concede, of course, that things are momentarily better once you’re in the shower, once the violent shivering and the mental confusion abates. But then, I have to step out again. Like Captain Oates. 

I find the bath less distressing, but only marginally. You still have to get out, goddamit.  You still have about 30 seconds to acclimatize before you experience total cellular and metabolic shut down. And of course, the towel heater is never on, is it?  

It is an absolute nightmare. So I stay dirty. And not in that way. Not til spring...

* I forgot to say that the winceyette nightdress of which I speak also features a delicate and very flattering pink floral print. (Oh, god, no! Get a friggin tissue for godsakes!) 

PS: My partner has just pointed out that he bought the Dreamland luxury heated mattress cover for me - and me only. There is never any diminishment of his sex drive in the cold, he says. He has never even heated his side of the mattress. Like Bear Grylls, he would probably prefer to spend the night suspended from a bivoucac on an ice shelf in the south pole. What a guy.