Cold In My Bones

This mornings edition of BrocanteHome is brought to you from my cozy, feather topped, fleecy-lined bed. Not because I am sick. Or melancholy. But because I got cold in my bones a few days ago and since then I simply cannot get warm.
So I have made three trips upstairs with supplies: my laptop, a tray with huuuge teapot in a cosy cosy, a tin of cinnamon stars, a cherry stone pillow hot from the microwave, and a stack of library books, and I do not intend to move until I can do so without the musical shriek of bones creaking.
This then is my rather self- indulgent plan for getting warm. The Winter sun is shining through old windows wet with condensation and I am wearing a thermal vest and three layers of woollies. Downstairs there is chicken and barley soup simmering in the slow cooker and here in my lovely cream bedroom I have got cinnamon and sandalwood incense burning on every surface, and a vanilla candle glowing on my bedside.
It is my intention to warm all my senses. To fool my body into good behavior. Soon I will close the lid on my laptop and snuggle down with Jimmy the cat and  a Muriel Spark thriller: a little sliver of book I am assured will have my heart racing and my brow sweating in fright. Though I had intended to run out into this damp, cold December and buy the very last Christmas gift on my list today, and then putter around a house sparkly after yesterdays festive scrub, I have instead decided that extreme self-care is in order if I am to survive the rest of the month without dropping, shivering, to my knees, wailing, sniffing and generally incapable…
Eventually of course I will have to break this cosy spell and go and collect Finn from school. One can hardly expect to leave him there because Mummy is a little chilly, so yes eventually I intend to crawl out from my fleece lined envelope, to take a pine-scented bath and  make myself presentable but until then I have got at least three gorgeous, snuggly hours to let a little heat boil up my blood and make these early days of Winter a little more tolerable.
 If only then I didn’t feel so guilty. If only I wasn’t convinced the Christmas police weren’t about to come a-calling and caution me for self-indulgence in a season that is so very rarely about us…