Soup of the Day…

I looked at my customer, not quite sure how to explain this to him.

“Ah, you see sir,” I said. “We don’t… technically serve soup in…” I paused and looked at the weather outside. It was gray, it was raining and it was freezing. “Summer. You see…” I couldn’t keep a straight face. “It’s… too warm for soup in summer.” I sniffed and tried to straighten up and gather my bedraggled pride. “In Africa.”

My British customer looked at me then, as I had at the weather outside. He looked down to his menu and made a considering sound. “Hmm,” he said. “Well, fancy that.”

The thing was that, we were all caught of guard. Some freak weather system and blown in a freak cold front over my beautiful, normally sunny and scorching hot country. Where we normally had temperatures of about 35 to 38 degrees Celsius this time of year, we now had to cope with temperatures barely reaching 10. The difference, I can tell you, is quite noticeable. What’s more, as with typical British weather, it’s raining and gray and windy. My country was caught completely off guard and I, even though I love the cold, was thrown into a limbo that I wasn’t quite sure how to get out of. My body for one was completely unprepared for this. I had recently lost quite a lot of weight and for some reason; I suspect that that last layer of fat was what had always kept me separate from the people who were constantly cold and the people who weren’t. I loved cold weather, but this was ridiculous.

So, this morning – feeling like an idiot, I pulled out my winter heater and turned it on full blast. I’m an active person, but could not even make myself get up out of bed to go cycling. I haven’t seen my horse in days because the roads leading to the farm where I keep him are completely flooded. My friend, who has a 4×4, managed to get through to see her own horse and told me that mine is unrecognizable underneath layers and layers and layers of mud. I’m not a particularly happy bunny.

And then to crown it all, we have camp this weekend. My group of wild and crazy friends have been planning this for weeks and are still quite positive about it (the girls kick ass, I have to say…) but I’m not so sure. Yes, I’m adventurous. Yes, I have hiked the West Highland Way in weather quite similar to this (alone) and yes, I have assisted a ewe to lamb whilst knee deep in snow… But that was different. That was in a country where terrible weather was like breakfast. It came, you dealt with it and you moved on. Here, I felt that it wasn’t quite like that and more to the point, I didn’t want to put up my tent in this rain. My partner is equally negative about this, which doesn’t help because the vibe is like fuel feeding my own antisocial fire. Why spend a weekend out in the elements when you can rather use this turn of events to spend some extra time cuddling and watching television. Under heaps and heaps and heaps of blankets…

Also, I had NaNoWriMo to consider. I wanted to reach 40k this weekend, possible 45k and I couldn’t do that whilst stuck in a leaky cold tent. I didn’t get round to writing as much as I wanted to this week and felt as if I had to make up for it. Firstly, because I’m not above failing reaching the 50k mark and secondly well, I was playing tag with another author who wrote about 8000 words a day… My head start didn’t mean anything when I discovered that the author managed to dish out 22800 words in about three days.

As I’m sitting here, I can’t predict where this weekend will lead to. In a few minutes, I have to leave for my NaNoWriMo write in while waiting to find out if I still had to give horse back riding lessons this afternoon (crazy pony people are not above demanding it…). I have to prepare for a camp that I’m not very positive about and through it all, I have to stay warm.

If this isn’t comedy, then I don’t know what is.

Have a super weekend guys.