Carol’s Column

Cold feet search nightly for a pair of warm thighs

IN everyone's life is one momentous occasion. Something to look back upon with great joy. Perhaps for Sir Edmund Hillary, it was as he placed his big left toe on the peak of Mount Everest. For Nelson Mandela, (hey, happy birthday Mr M), it may have been as he stepped out of prison after 27 years.

My own most momentous occasion changed my life.

Some people are born with cold feet. Lamentably I am one of them. In fact, cold feet is an affliction more common to women than men.

Dr Peregrine Prakesh, writing in a reputed medical journal, describes the incidence of cold feet among women as being almost pandemic.

Unbearable

It has something to do with the fact that women's blood supply is concentrated in their brains, thus their superior brain power, while men's blood supply is more active below their belts.

Cold feet are not funny, as sufferers of such icy appendages will tell you.

Herman van Tonder of Potloodsrus, I think it's in the Free State, wrote a thesis about the prevention of cold feet. His solution was to dip frozen feet into a bucket of almost boiling water hourly.

To facilitate this, he invented the portable thermos bucket which is still in use in some rural areas, including Ventersdorp.

My good friend Betty rubs her feet in brandy. "Ten-year-old brandy is best," she says, "but at a pinch, cooking brandy will do."

My cold feet are worst at night. During the day, walking, toe wiggling, running, twitching – all the normal things one does with feet – keeps them warmish.

But it's my nights that used to be unbearable.

Even on a fluffy sheet, wearing thick abolish-sex flannel pyjamas and covered by a synthetic duckdown duvet and hot water-bottled, my feet froze.

So, I did what all women do when in stress, I placed my feet between my spouse's warm and hirsute thighs.

"What's that," he'd yell, or words to that effect, most not printable, and jerk awake.

"It's only me," I'd murmur, trying to relocate my feet. "Remember, you married me and my feet for better or worse."

And then, one night in July, 1991, he gave me an ultimatum.

"This bed is not big enough for you, me and your feet," he said.

So, I bought an electric blanket. A truly momentous occasion. And it really did change my life.

Deceased

It keeps me warm, doesn't answer back, doesn't snore or make night sounds, doesn't switch on the light to see what time it is and is always welcoming.

That was until last night. I switched on my blanket, there was a flash and then nothing. No little red light, no heat, nothing.

There I was, shivering, desolate and cold with my chilly feet like glacial lumps of ice, mourning my recently deceased electric blanket, when my husband climbed into bed.

He said: "Put your feet on my thighs and I'll warm them." It is not everyone who experiences two momentous occasions in life.

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