Dear LPG readers,

I want to say a word or two to those readers who are now beginning to find getting up a bit more of a challenge.  Not because of the additional aches and pains that they are starting to experience or even because they feel that there is not a lot that can’t wait despite all the things that they are scheduled to do during the day they are about to encounter, but simply because it is cold out there. 

After a particularly long gap between the time I opened my eyes and the time my toes made contact with my bedroom carpet one morning not so long ago, I realised that I was behaving in the same way that I did as a child on those cold mornings when school or work was supposed to motivate me to make the move.  

I did a bit of maths and worked out that anyone who has reached the age of seventy has had at least 25,550 opportunities to perfect this daily routine, and while the days start with a warm and bright prognosis, it seems much easier to accomplish. 

Can you remember your days of only being awake when you wanted to be, or being gently woken up for days full of nothing but play and being given nourishment that resulted in bodily incomings and outgoings? I don’t, but they must have happened because though I can’t remember my own, I have seen many babies in my family enjoying their wake-up experiences. Though I don’t know much about it, I was once a baby like everyone reading my message.

As we age, the need to be there (regardless of whether ‘there’ is school or work) would have been incentive enough for most of us to swap the horizontal for a more vertical outlook at the beginning of each day.  The threat of a scolding from those once so accommodating parents, or the need to get paid, used to swing it for me.  But, during those years just after retirement, that morning moment, when you first open your eyes and re-familiarise yourself with your surroundings, should look so different when the world of work is no longer part of the equation. 

For most septuagenarians, getting up back then often happened when it was really cold. We were not privy to a pre-timed boost of central heating, but once you remember the time of year, the fact that it is not cold often wins the battle between remembering what used to be and the reality of the temperature beyond the bedclothes.   

I know that it is not the same for everyone. Still, we are relatively recent retirees and should hopefully be looking forward to the mornings we face because we have exciting things that we want to do with every new day, especially considering all the ‘wake up get up’ practice we have had over the years.

Despite all the anticipation of the day, the winter mornings still get to me, and I spend so many of them, having finally emerged from the covers, regretting the hour that I could have done something with.

The saddest thing for me is that all that cold is often in my mind because when I finally let the outside atmosphere get to my skin, it is nearly always not as bad as I waste all that time imagining while looking out of the little peephole I have fashioned with my pillow and blanket.  

All this contemplation got me doing a little research, and I cannot be the only person with all these feelings on the subject because there is a surprising amount of advice on the internet. 

 I do have one tip to add, though.  If everything else fails, try bundling up your dressing gown and putting it between the sheets and either next to your hot water bottle, or where your hot water bottle would be if you had one because, although it will always look a bit crumpled, there is something subliminally comforting about knowing that, when you face the winter morning atmosphere, it will be at the optimum temperature to help you maintain a cosy barrier during that initial hit of cold air, be it real or imagined…

MM,  Kent.

MM shares what Google taught him about getting beyond the covers when cold.

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