OK, so ‘Arctic Britain’ is perhaps a touch too dramatic, but us British are just not used to this kind of thing.
‘This kind of thing’ meaning temperatures below freezing. In fact, since records began in this country – and that was a long time ago – this is only the second time that the temperatures have been below zero every day for a week.
My wife scoffs at my temperature sensitivities, she is from Canada where it remains below freezing for a good month or four each year. In fact, last year, when she went back to her hometown for a few days, the temperature was 40 degrees below zero. Now that’s cold.
But I have to be tough. Srila Prabhupada wrote a letter to his sankirtan devotees in England saying how he himself did not like the cold but that: …”you are simply thinking, ‘what is this thing on my skin?’
As a consequence of that letter, in which Srila Prabhupada seemed to praise his English disciples ability to stiffen their upper lips and even relish the cold, the Hare Krishna movement I joined in 1974 was one where tolerance of life-threatening temperatures was held to be directly equivalent to pleasing the spiritual master. It would not have been so bad had we not deliberately placed ourselves out in cold weather with desperately inadequate clothing, believing that we were honouring a sacred principle of spiritual life. A slight philosophical misconception, which might have had more serious physiological repercussions were it not for our youthful enthusiasm.
Thus we rose from our sleep at 3.30 am, Christmas Eve 1974, and ran half-naked into the dark, icy waves at Whitley Bay Beach near Newcastle on Tyne. Or stood on the street in Glasgow the following winter , trying to sell books in the biting sub-zero wind, with no gloves, hands blue with the cold. Or, failing to locate a river for our morning bath, rolled around in the freshly fallen snow.
I still have my cold water splash, even on the coldest mornings, because there’s nothing that wakes me up quicker and prepares my mind for meditation. Nothing like cold water to create a certain distance between body and soul thats good for transcending the vagaries of the mind. I’d recommend it to anyone even now.
But just make sure you bundle up when you venture outdoors in this new arctic Britain.
Dear KMD,
love hearing your olde memories of the street.
One of the advantages of having a good day on record distribution was that while having the shower at the back of the van, from containers filled up the previous night from some unsuspecting house, you could burn the empty boxes to keep warm while showering. Of course if you had a bad day then no burning boxes.
And just to remind you of Ananda Moya’s famous bucket bath, it always went way over his head to have any effect.
More memories please.
Vamsi
Vamsi, you were one of the remarkable Vaishnava characters that populate my memory. Because of you the cold didn’t bite so bad. There are so many memories; I’ll try to write some more for old time’s sake. Thanks for writing.