COLDING.
INT. A LOCAL HALL. NIGHT. TOM, ANNE AND HARRY ARE JOINED BY JIM WHO IS THE LATEST MEMBER OF THEIR WEATHER SOCIETY.
JIM:
I know its my first meeting here in this village but as its getting wintery outside I thought it the right time to discuss how we will handle the cold that will inevitably come our way. What are the winters like here?
TOM:
We get a lot of cold usually. Cold snaps, cold days, cold nights, falls of cold, cold weather, cold-
JIM:
Wait a second. 'Falls of cold'?
TOM:
Oh yes, some quite heavy at times especially in the more mountainous areas of the mountain. Of course the kids love making cold men and throwing cold balls.
JIM:
Right I'm really not following what you're talking about. Can I ask you how you monitor the temperature here? With my background in meteorology I have several tools and scales at my disposal in which I can determine the temperature. The most common is by placing thermometers in a Stevenson screen. What do you use?
TOM:
Oh we wouldn't have anything that fancy, we, we just listen for heat.
JIM:
Listen for heat? How do you do that?
TOM:
Well this time of year you'd be listening for nothing. If you can hear the nothing, you know it's cold. Cold doesn't have a sound but warmth has a sort of a clickity clackity click to it. Quite horse-like in the trotting on a wooden plank sense; soundwise.
JIM:
Do you not use Celsius or Fahrenheit?
TOM:
No no, the horse is the main unit of measurement here. There is an old saying around here: 'The cold is so deep it would be up quite far on a horse', or 'It's the big horse that sees the small horse and the small that sees the big but it's a bit harder for them to see each other when it's cold'.
ANNE:
Another is: 'If you ride a horse out of the cold, you'll ride him right out of it'. 'The larger the cold the colder the cold, to a horse', also rings true this time of year.
HARRY, TOM AND ANNE (singing):
'When you hear the clip clops stopping,
the temperature is dropping.
Hop on a horse in a way known as alight,
In the day of the day or the day of the night.
When it starts colding in blizzards and colding in drifts,
We better start riding horses in shifts.
Why measure in Celsius or Fahrenheit?
When you can measure in horses and measure it right.
In the cold day of day or the day of the night'.
JIM:
I'm really getting nowhere at all here. I'm speaking with a bunch of people who think snow is called cold and who measure temperature in horses.
Oh look there's a couple of kids, I'm bound get more sense out of them. So young lad what are you asking for, for Christmas?
BOY 1:
I'm getting a duck reddener and a milk magnifier.
JIM:
A milk magnifier?
BOY:
Yeah I love making milk look bigger than it is.
JIM:
Jesus mother of the holy divine...how about you little girl?
GIRL:
A bubbleduster and a-
JIM (incredulous):
A what!?
GIRL:
A bubbleduster. Its a dusterthat's so light it will allow you to dust bubbles and a mam-e-am-marocka-cappa-poppin.
CLOSEUP OF JIM WITH HIS FACE CONTORTED IN UTTER CONFUSION.
TOM:
Oh look, its colding.
EVERYONE RUSHES TO THE WINDOW AND GAZES IN AWE. JIM LOOKS OUT BUT NOTHING IS HAPPENING. WE SEE KIDS OUTSIDE RUNNING AND LAUGHING AND THROWING NOTHING AT EACH OTHER.
JIM:
What the hell is wrong with you people? There is nothing happening! It's just a bit cold. Are you all mental? I'll show you.
JIM RUNS OUTSIDE AND LOOKS TO BE REMONSTRATING ANGRILY WITH THE KIDS. THEY ALL THROW NOTHING AT HIM BUT WE HEAR FX OF LOADS OF SNOWBALLS SMASHING HIM IN THE HEAD AND FACE.
HE IN NOW LYING FLAT ON HIS BACK GASPING. A HORSE SLOWLY WALKS BY.
END.
