I’ve been struggling to find something to say about warmth. It’s such a cosy word, soft, agreeable, comforting.

That’s why it was a good idea to change ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’. How ever it was presented or explained, it was hard for us in northern Europe not to consider a small rise in average temperature to be an improvement.

I expect most people reading this will have been born in the same era as me – the 1940s and 50s. So I can’t impress you with tales of freezing homes with no upstairs heating, the treat of being allowed to wash at the kitchen sink if there was ice on the inside of the bathroom windows. That was normal, wasn’t it?

My life didn’t go entirely according to plan so on my 40th birthday I had never lived in a house with central heating. Now we have it, but Parkinson’s makes me hot and sweaty and I’m usually trying to turn it down or opening the front door for a welcome blast of cold air.

I can’t say my parents were warm towards me but again, but it was a different era. If Covid had appeared in the 1950s, The Prime Minister would have had an easier job – ‘Carry on not hugging and keeping apart from family and anyone else.’

I have it easy these days, don’t have to worry about keeping warm, hugs whenever I want. It hasn’t always been like this. I should never forget how fortunate I am – even with Parkinson’s.

Jim Read 15 July 2021

(C) Danielle Jones (Teale) Dance, Collective IDentity, written by Jim Read