Misery on my bike yesterday as both hands appeared to freeze during my 50 minute journey from Elephant and Castle back home. I wondered how cold it had to be to get frost bite. But I was wearing gloves - it's just that they are an old lady's pair, from a charity shop in Colchester. Moaning to fellow cyclists (forced to stop by me at red lights), all sympathised, but pointed at their cosy fingers claiming their gloves were warm as toast.
I think they meant bought in Canada or suitable for winter extremes.
"No such thing as bad weather, only bad gloves"
Although I have had toasty, ski gloves the problem is that one, then the other, always gets lost. Strangely I find it harder to ride my bike if I'm not in matching gloves (does anyone else have this problem?). So what I'd like to know is how to avoid losing wet gloves, damp hats and scarves. Do you know a system that makes it far harder to lose things? People living in cold places must have some secret - perhaps like gloves on a string I used when the kids were toddlers.
It's an east wind but shops are too hot
This particular cold snap comes with high pressure, and a very full moon so dry and bitter cold nights. You can see how the cold has leached the wet out of London's grey pavements. But on a shopping trip today (to get a warm duvet for Nell, for her birthday) Pete and I struggled to be warm enough for walking the streets, without dying of overheat in the Oxford Street shops.
Over to you
How do people manage this conundrum in really cold places like Moscow or Stockholm? Are there vast, efficiently run cloakrooms in their stores? Or do they just keep the store temperatures lower than we do in London .(In John Lewis quite a few of the staff were able to be in shirt sleeves - a habit which people often take home and might partially explain why the UK's carbon emissions rose by 3 per cent. It's the first time emissions have not been on a falling trend since 2003 (see story here). Horrible.
With the sun above, these lovely woods smelt of warming earth, and magic visitors to play. Nell set up a shop in one forked ash tree while I took loads of photos of buds and deer baskets (woven fences to stop the muntjac and other nibbly beasties from coppicing coppiced timber to death). 
