Coaxing Bob Through A Cold Winter.

Do you think that a ruse is akin to a fib?

It's not as if I am professing to having had a harder childhood than today's youth, but memories abound of having to go on leisurely walks up the Bavarian mountain paths with family...leisurely for whom begs to be questioned. Gosh, back then the adults were ecstatic at the thought of walking up a mountain path for an hour or two only to have to return the same way.

Something must have registered back then, as I now adore walking...but at eight,nine or ten, fondness looked different than my sit ins in the middle of the path when I had enough of walking. One thing I recall vividly was the ever present promise of the end of the walk being just around the next corner...removed by ten, more like it.

Compare that to the hardship of today's youth, which might involve their parents switching off the wifi...our lot had to spend family time outside, ambling up a mountain path, playing table tennis or a game of canasta...gosh, we were lucky after all.

As for coaxing the Bobster along, it has a touch of just around the corner about it. Bob being a man from warmer climes it makes him a touch cranky when faced with winter. The first few days are fine, but then he goes through a liturgy of wintry complaints. The cold being his main one. Fair enough.

Trying to be a good wife and at the same time cutting off the numerous

" Oh my gosh, it is so %$#&$ cold! "

which after a while does grate on one's nerves, I have applied a true and tested method my mum used on me back in my stubborn phase of sitting on the path in protest to a leisurely Sunday walk.

" Bob, I heard (!) that the weather will turn sunny and warm next week. "

He almost saw through my little fib, but he did seem a bit more resigned to his last week of cold weather...so far I've tried it twice and perhaps this ruse has a few more tries in it...although, this winter it might be a hard sell as we are experiencing the coldest winter in thirty years.

Biggi