In the cold light of day...

Somewhere deep inside my mind I’ve been worrying a bit about this ongoing cold snap and the side effects it might unexpectedly bring to people who didn’t listen to their parents when they were young.

After all, we now know that it sometimes takes years for things to manifest themselves or the side-effects of stuff to come to light, so can we really be sure now that ‘our faces won’t freeze like that,’ years after we thought we were safe?

And surely I’m not the only person who should be worried.

When I was wee I probably thought that this was just an old line to stop me from pulling faces or mocking people, but with age and experience (I nearly put wisdom there, but I knew you’d never believe it) now I am worried that that warnings might be true.

Think back now folks – if you were ever on the receiving end of the warning “stop making those faces, your face will freeze like that,” then you should be worried about this cold snap.

I mean what if this unseasonally cold weather was the trigger and the warnings we ignored all those years ago were really true?

This could lead to a huge and unexpected upsurge in the number of adults walking around with contorted faces – or worse still – with their tongues out.

If you don’t think just having your tongue out is worse than some of the faces you might have pulled when you were a kid, try walking around outside for a minute tomorrow with your tongue out.

At this stage I think it is only right for me to advise you to stay away from metal things like say bus-stops or line-poles if you are going to attempt this.

Touching these with your tongue in freezing temperatures is not a good idea – or so I have been told!

All of this strangely enough came to light during time spent with my daughters out in the cold today, time that all of a sudden awoke in me a fresh awareness of some of words of wisdom we’d all been given when we were smaller.

For a start, I made my girls put on their coats before we went outside. I know, I know, this is just common sense – but here’s the thing – adults know that but young people will only wear coats if they want to.

And, when you think about it, saying to somebody - ‘you are making me feel cold’ because they don’t have a coat or jumper on is just silly.

All the same, when it came to sending one of the girls inside to get some scissors as I struggled to open a bag of salt, I made sure I warned her not to run with them and it was then that I began to realise that I had taken more of my past with me than I had imagined.

I never thought that I’d do that. I was always sure that if all my friends put their hands in the fire, I wouldn’t.

But there you go, it seems that if not the hand, I must have put my head in, cos so much of that stuff seems to have been burned deep into my mind.

As it turns out however that might be very handy.

Cos if there is a flame of any kind in there it might, just might, prevent the onslaught of face freeze…