The Premise, Paris -4C

It was -4 C and I was walking toward Le Tour Eiffel. My eyes watering and gloved fists in jacket pockets as I set a fast pace over Le Pont Alexandre III, my favourite of the elegant river bridges in Paris; its ornately beautiful glass lamps were just beginning to glow a warm amber, as if to say, simply, Voilà!

While in Paris, I recall talking about the novelty of the weather with an Australian from Adelaide who I first met in an elevator at the Charles de Gaulle airport. Affectionately known by my London housemates, somewhat misleadingly, as ‘Mr Paris’, he too had yet to experience a true northern hemisphere winter. We agreed that it was very bloody cold.

At the time, a bracing Easterly was sweeping across Europe from Siberia and Mr Paris and I were trying to come to terms with the thought that someplace there were people a damn sight colder than we.

“Minus 15?,” I was saying, “What the hell do people do when it's minus 15?”

I can remember picturing fur-clad women and children, Dr Zhivago style, holed up in ice caves, miserable looking Alaskan huskies and malamutes pawing at doors to come inside…

“Madness”, I thought, out loud probably.

I'm writing this as somewhat of a premise to my decision to fly to Canada in winter. I wanted to see what -15 C feels like. Maybe I wanted a fluffy fur hat.