I Let Myself Get Cold…. Freezing!

What it means to put discomfort aside to enjoy lovely moments, why the muse for Millais’s painting ‘Ophelia’ was a little too realistic, and why my mum sits in the stream at the bottom of our garden.

I’ve decided to start a new little series where I take a line from a poem that I’ve written (there are literally hundreds so this could be endless, come along for the ride) and I will unpack it a bit and see where I end up.

This one gets stuck in my head a lot, so I’m starting with her:  

“I let myself get cold: freezing 

It was a late September evening 

I was to the music like a moth to a flame” 

I really hate the cold. I spend all the winter months wearing leggings under jeans, vests and long sleeves and multiple jumpers. Don’t ever get me to make a decision when I’m cold, I’m rendered quite incapable. So to ‘let myself get cold’… well, that must have been some occasion.  

I wrote those words in September 2021 on a midweek evening. I was walking home from a dinner with friends and outside Kings Cross station there was a crowd of perhaps twenty people, of all ages and genders, dancing salsa. One young man presided over a big, grey speaker on wheels and the energy and joy was completely hypnotic. 

(Home at that point was a modern but very dark flat just beside Kings Cross station, dark because there were only windows on one side of the flat and a huge tree was right in front of seventy-five percent of those windows. I lived there with Cecilia.) 

I was enamoured by the scene instantly, as I always am by dancing, and perched myself on one of the huge concrete blocks that marked the edges of the dance floor. I was grinning ear to ear, tapping my feet against each other, bobbing my head and watching passersby and their reactions; some joining in a little drunkenly, others stopping to watch, but at a distance in case they got pulled into the shaking and spinning. 

A young couple came over and asked me to take their picture, and then video them dancing. They hadn’t been dating very long, the man told me, and then in an exaggerated whisper with one hand by his mouth, he said “I’m going to marry her, she’s going to have my kids. I swear!” She laughed, a gorgeous laugh that made her whole body ripple. The sort of laugh you would absolutely fall in love with. The girl told me I had a lovely voice, and said I couldn’t be from London, but did I like it here? I said how could I not. They tried to give me a bottle of something as a gift “for being so gorgeous and friendly…it hasn’t even been opened, look! It’s safe, this isn’t weird we promise! We won’t take no for an answer, enjoy your evening!!”. They set the bottle next to me. I waved them off.  

I let myself get very cold that evening, freezing in fact. My fingers were so numb I couldn’t open my phone, I must have sat for over an hour and I was in a summer dress but it was an autumn evening so the soft hairs on my arms were standing on end. It was past my bedtime, I was tired and cold and physically a little uncomfortable (with a slightly numb backside from the concrete) but this kind of joy and life that I was witnessing felt so special I couldn’t drag myself away.  

I didn’t drag myself away, I ended up forced away by the actions of a persistent man who was absolutely insistent on talking to me. I didn’t engage, I didn’t react, and he eventually moved away but stayed within eyesight… and then returned five minutes later. After a few rounds of this, I said, “I’m going to talk to my friends now” and, skirting the dance floor, I went to a woman sitting near the speaker on wheels. I approached her and hugged her saying, “Just pretend you know me, there’s a man who won’t leave me alone.”  

We sat together making small talk about salsa until the man went into the underground and I made my move, slipping away and not quite breathing until I was through the security gates of the little courtyard in front of my flat. 

I warmed up inside, one of the best feelings for someone who detests being cold, and I went to bed.  

That man didn’t give me an experience to write home about, though ironically I write about it now. Pretty standard: Man sees a lone woman, approaches her and makes conversation whilst being given the absolute bare minimum in return. So, really, he’s just monologuing at an uninterested and uncomfortable stranger, with the added power dynamic of man/woman. It happened just the other day too. I was waiting for a friend in Trafalgar Square and a man approached me.  

I walked off, met my friend and we had a little laugh about how naive to think he was JUST complimenting my outfit and not trying to get my number/to bother me! (An outfit that did warrant compliments by the way: pink beanie, lots of sparkles, purple fluffy coat. So fun.)  

Ahhh Trafalgar Square. One of my most favourite places in London. I have lovely memories of school trips, outings to the National Gallery, protests about climate justice, and rallying for the safety of women: standing on the edge of the fountain declaring that women should be safe on the streets of the capital. Great times.

I observed a pigeon drinking from a puddle in Trafalgar square about 30 minutes ago. I hadn’t ever really thought about pigeons drinking. So I filmed it. For posterity. I had walked down the Strand from home (currently Covent Garden) to seek my best friend, the sun, and we found each other on the steps in front of the National Gallery (my beloved). I found the sun, or it found me. Either way, we sat together while I read a book, and I let myself get cold: freezing! It’s February after all. I was uncomfortable, but my discomfort was not more than my total contentment, in the company of my Sun with a good book... until hunger began to play a part, and then the discomfort began to outweigh the contentment and I found myself in the seat I occupy now. I’m in Waterstones Cafe, an empty bowl of soup in front of me and a lovely, chatty group of women from Yorkshire to my left who are minding my phone as it charges on the wall next to them.  

The keyword in the line (yes remember this all started because of a line I wrote, glad you’re still with me), is ‘let.’ I let myself get freezing.  

There is something here about autonomy and discipline and prioritising certain things over comfort. Being able to endure one less than perfect factor because of the benefits that the overall situation will have. Crucially I always get to choose when I let myself get cold. I have options, and I always have the option of warming up somewhere and somehow.  

My mother has recently decided to swim the channel, yes, quite extreme really if you didn’t know already that she regularly swims several kilometres in lakes. As part of her training, and for her own mental wellbeing, she has been immersing herself in the freezing cold stream in our garden. As she lies in the stream, only her head above the surface in a swimming costume and beanie, she is the ultimate picture of discipline, strength, and honestly, madness. She stays in a little longer each time and then scurries up the bank and across the garden, beaming and very proud of herself, into the kitchen to drip next to the Aga.  

My mum, in the garden stream, just her head above the water. Sounds quite like one of my favourite Shakespearean characters, Ophelia!  

Although Mum’s defiance of the cold and admirable grit is quite the opposite of poor Ophelia who also ended up lying in a stream, with only her head above the water. In the case of Ophelia, her body is soft and floating, giving in to tragedy. My Mum, by contrast, must work hard to relax into the cold, gritting her teeth and muttering words of encouragement to herself. Her actions are to improve her mental and physical health, the very opposite of madness induced suicide. In 1851, the painter John Everett Millais painted the famous portrait ‘Ophelia’, and his model was Elizabeth Siddal – the pre-Raphaelite muse of the moment. She was a painter and writer herself, tragically underacknowledged of course as a woman. The subject of much of her writing was her troubled mind, her thoughts of depression, and the natural world. Siddal was a real-life Ophelia: beautiful, ethereal, tortured, and going slowly mad surrounded by men who underestimated her and gave her worth based only on her beauty. (It was said she was her most beautiful when dead.. and not talking or being??! Charming.) The similarities don’t stop there, Siddal, in posing for Millais, had to lie in a bathtub through the winter months for hours on end. Lamps were lit underneath the bathtub but Millais, so lost in his work, would fail to notice when they had gone out and so Siddal lay, stoically, as the water got cold. She fell horribly ill. So good of her to increase the realism by nearly dying in that bathtub of hypothermia!!!  

She martyred herself for a man’s painting - how heroic... or depressing. Maybe she knew that the only way to be part of art was to be the muse, she couldn’t possibly make any impact as the artist. The only way to get into the hallowed halls of the gallery was to nearly die in a porcelain bathtub in a studio in February. Haunting.  

Luckily, there have been a grand total of ZERO times that I have felt no other option than to lie in a cold bathtub while a man paints me.

Let’s finish with a list of times that I have let myself get cold; freezing… because I decided that the joy and contentment outweighed the shivers:  

• Swimming in Hampstead Heath ponds (summer hurry up!) 

• That time I watched people salsa dance in Kings Cross

• Swimming in the sea (in England on every occasion because the English sea is always icy no matter the time of year) 

• Long walks with good people, at all times of day and night, in all seasons  

• Watching bonfire night fireworks 

• Sitting outside in pub gardens, or at cafes or restaurants with the company I love 

• Driving (quite fast) in my friend’s mum's convertible in 3 °C with the roof down... in December... at night. That was magic.  

So, I guess the takeaway from this is that if I’m ever with you, and I let myself get cold, freezing, then the situation, and you, are completely worth my discomfort. That’s quite lovely, isn’t it?