Chilly

I'm always fascinated by these ice discs you get on top of buckets of water and such like. I stuck this one vertically on our shell midden so that the sun shone through it.

It never gets very cold here on the western fringe of the British mainland so these frosty days are something to be cherished. Nowadays, without very young or very old* people in the house we manage with space heating rather than central heating. In my family of origin we never had it either and I'm not really sure how my mother managed with a winter baby. Wood could be collected round about but paraffin (kerosene) had to be carried a fair distance. Although Centigrade thermometers sensibly indicate zero degrees as freezing point I'm still hardwired at 32 Fahrenheit as the critical number. My father checked and recorded the air temperature every morning, mindful of his vegetable garden.

Recently I've been hearing that cool bedrooms are essential for healthy sleep, since they encourage the production of melatonin.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001t9kt
https://healthnews.com/longevity/biohacking/the-sleep-and-health-benefits-of-sleeping-in-a-chilly-room/

That's OK I thought, my bedroom is currently 8C (last year it went down to 4C on occasion) - oh wait, that's means it's 44F which is a lot less than the recommended 60F (15C). I do have an electric blanket and a cat so the cool air does me no harm,  in fact it's a benefit I should treasure.

It's just been revealed that last year saw the world's oceans reaching the highest temperatures ever recorded.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/11/ocean-warming-temperatures-2023-extreme-weather-data

*Matter of opinion of course!