World Wrap Up Warm

Coldest day of the winter so far: -14C it said on my iPhone this morning, and I believe it. We have a little ritual over breakfast, looking up the temperatures in half a dozen places: Beijing, London, Bangkok, Tokyo, Yakutsk and the North Pole. Yakutsk is unbelievable: it's only 1,500 miles north of Beijing but it's regularly -40C or -50C. But Beijing is cold enough. Numbed face cycling into work; it's the wind that does it. Spare a thought, though, for these poor fish swimming around in the only bit of the pond which hasn't frozen over. And Europe, which is experiencing the coldest temperatures and heaviest snow in decades.