Wheat Pack Warmth

It is the depths of winter and a deep cold winter it is proving to be.  Today didn't start out as icy as many days have recently but it was soon beset with cold wind and stingy frigid rain.  It quickly became the sort of day which makes me long for open fires, mulled wine, snuggles - but being a Monday that wasn't going to happen.

Mondays are always a bit of a shock to the system, after a lazy weekend of sleeping in, getting up, ready and at work before 9am is always somewhat of a challenge.  However the last month or so of Mondays has been particularly harsh as the heating in our office has partially died.  This means that because the building chills right down over the weekend, it takes till approximately 2pm till it is warm enough to emerge from coats and scarves.  Of course with the very cold weather at the moment heating repairers are in such demand that we still have another 2 weeks to wait until it will be fixed.

In reality this means that we still spend the majority of our week working in comfort, but I've had to come up with some ways to survive those cold Monday mornings. I've ditched wearing skirts or dresses on Mondays, in fact if I know there are no client meetings, I wear jeans and jumpers - not to mention thick hiking socks under my boots.  Hot drinks are a must, along with something nice and warm for lunch.

But today I've come up with the best solution so far - a wheat pack.  Who would have thought a corduroy pillow stuffed with wheat could be just what I needed?  If you are not familiar with them, they are exactly as I've described and you heat them up in the microwave.  They hold their heat really well, so it is like a hot water bottle without the risk of spilling hot water.

I brought my old faithful wheat pack in this morning, heated it up, and it sat on my lap while the office's partial heating struggled to warm the place up.  For the first time in weeks I wasn't shivering at my desk and I could get stuck straight into work.  In two weeks all this will no doubt be a distant, cold memory, but for now, my wheat pack is my favourite colleague.