First frost

Sunrise over Westzaan

It froze on the ground in the night and I could feel it in my bones. Not that it was all that cold, but rather because I slept in a t-shirt rather than winter pyjamas.

Even after 12 years in (and countless prior visits to) Western Europe, I haven’t quite developed the knee-jerk reflexes of the natives to the climate. I suppose it’s comparable to what happens when Europeans travel to Africa. While the locals do it instinctively (or they wouldn’t have survived to adulthood), Northerners must consciously run through the checklist of hat, water, and appropriate clothing before going outdoors.

By contrast, while I checked the pressure in my spare wheel every time I filled-up, and always had a 5-litre jerry can of water in my car in South Africa, I now leave it to the garage to check every six months – you are seldom far from a service station in Europe.

I learned the hard way during my first winter here. I’d acquired an old Honda 650 “Silver Wing” bike that I used to commute between Alkmaar, where we had found a comfortable apartment, and Amsterdam where I worked.

Most of my colleagues were also expats, so the annual “Christmas party” was held in early December to pre-empt the inevitable holiday exodus. Afterwards, in the wee hours, I rode home across the polders north of Amsterdam that run from Waterland into Kennemerland and West Friesland. At that time of night, it takes less than an hour.

It was beautiful and almost eerie as tails of mist swirled in off the damp farmland to meet, just a few inches above the road surface. There was hardly any traffic so the bike made a wake in the mist like a speedboat.

I was so fascinated that I didn’t feel my toes freezing. I was wearing a pair of ankle-high cowboy boots I’d bought in South Africa. They weren’t insulated for European conditions – especially not for cutting the beam-curls of a wake through frozen mist at 100 km/h.

It only started to hurt half an hour after I got home, as I took off my boots and stretched out next to the heater. It didn’t hurt for long and was very slight, but unmistakably the early signs of frostbite. Any native Dutchman would have packed those boots away for the winter. But so we learn.

Having lived in a city until I was 13, as city folk do, I’d look out of the window, see if it was heavily overcast, and decide whether to take a raincoat. Under the influence of a European father, I would tend to err on the side of caution – hence a trail of raincoats lost and forgotten on busses, trains and classroom pegs.

The next year, I was (wisely) moved to a country boarding school; to a hostel populated mainly by farmers’ sons and the occasional borderline urban delinquent sent to the country for a dose of discipline (to whit, the undersigned).

In an area often plagued by drought, if you wore a raincoat when it wasn’t actually raining, you were asked whether you were “chasing the rain away”. There was also something curiously un-macho about wearing gloves for anything other than (official) boxing. But then it just didn’t really get cold enough. Even in the army in Grahamstown, where we’d stand guard duty looing like grizzly bears for all the layers.

Windmill in Westzaan

My first winter in Holland soon taught me another lesson: Put on your gloves when you are inside and your hands are warm. Once your hands are frozen, the gloves won’t warm them. A born Hollander might well shake his head and say “duh!” as justifiably as I would to a Northerner who goes into the Karoo without spare water.

There’s a bonus in having four distinct seasons. The constant reminders of nature’s regeneration. But then, wherever you are in the world, your relationship with the weather is inevitably dependent on your attitude.

The days are distinctly shorter here in the North – more noticeably so than in the south due to the tilt of the Earth. Mothballed winter coats once again punctuate the street scene, and the festive lights are turned on long before closing time.

The popular media are keen to tell readers, starry-eyed with images of snow and skating, that “a cold winter is predicted”. The meteorologists retort that it’s too soon for their inexact science to say.

Either way, I’d better get those winter tyres fitted to be safe. . .   – AMB


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