It’s as cold in London as I can remember, and I’ve lived here now for well over twenty years. This is the sort of cold I remember from New England in the ’80’s.  The sort of cold you’re happy to have at a ski resort, but not necessarily in the place where you need to live your everyday life.

This sort of cold brings out the animal in me, in that it makes me remember that I, and all of us, are essentially animals. Frigid cold, for example, makes me feel scared, almost panicky, as if I fear for my life. I worry about having to be out in the cold for too long. I fight against it. I eat a lot. I sleep as much as I can. I burrow into blankets.

But this past week I did have one delicious moment, or rather hour, thanks to the cold and my new modern, glassy flat’s trouble at retaining heat. One afternoon this week I took to my bed in the late afternoon, just as the sun was setting and any hope of warmth was dying along with the day, wrapped myself up in an old duvet with a cup of tea at my side, and read. I rarely read during the work day. Somehow it feels decadent, like going to the movies in the afternoon. But I was so cold….

I’m reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ newest novel, The Marriage Plot. I’m a big fan of his, and this isn’t disappointing me. Classic themes, almost stereotypic characters, overly-familiar episodes, and yet, absorbing, engaging, funny and heartbreaking. I’ll say no more since I haven’t finished yet, but that hour or so under the covers hiding from the cold was delicious enough to be briefly unafraid of death by freezing.

But since just last week I was worrying about it being too warm for winter, I’ll stop complaining. Instead, here is something astonishingly beautiful that I found while hunting around You Tube for something appropriate. Appropriate or not, it must be seen/heard. It warms me more than the thickest down: Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo as read by Richard Burton.