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By Jeff and Judy

High anticipation

There must be a darned good reason why a sexagenarian couple living peacefully, contentedly and lightly clad on a paradise Caribbean island with December and January midday temperatures hovering around 85° F would fly off to where the chances of “Jack Frost biting at your toes” are ten degrees higher.

When it isn’t drizzling cats and dogs in penetrating fine particles through a thick pea soup fog.

But that’s exactly what Judy and I will be doing in twelve days. Willingly, I hastily add.

Just what is luring us for three weeks of clinging together under thick quilts and blankets and, based on past experiences, wearing heavy sweaters and thick socks in bed to keep Jack (hopefully not Jeff?) at bay?

Instead of sleeping fully unencumbered and uncovered in flimsy dreamwear with windows and doors flung wide-open, or if the spirit moves us on a beachside veranda under moon and stars.

If you guessed something involving “family” you win a prize because the whole shooting match, or as they say in Northwest England to where we’re heading, “The Full Monty” is about to happen.

Our three children, their respective spouses, our five grandchildren and Judy and I have been invited to spend the upcoming holidays in rolling Cheshire countryside about 20 miles south of Manchester in the beautiful, and fortunately large, home owned by Judy’s brother and sister-in-law.

Proving and paraphrasing something Mae West said, “We have poor relations and rich relations, and rich is better.”

Between now and blast-off much has to be accomplished. Judy heads the gift buying and wrapping department and is already relishing the prospect of again seeing faces on those who still firmly believe in Santa Claus.

Then, and don’t laugh, we have to dig-out our winter clothes. Literally. The last time we spotted them I think they were hanging on a rack in a dark storage room that hasn’t seen the light of day, or night, in months.

But most of all we have to go into paramilitary training to steel our fragile bodies for the savage climate change and temperature drop ahead of us.

Which is why even more that usual we’ll be splashing around in the sea like two seal pups to let the West Indian sun warm us to the absolute quick – wherever that may be.

To build-up our inner heat, better than any electric blanket, for when we officially usher-in 2003.

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Just who are Jeff and Judy? Judy and Jeff Sellers are a US couple who love sunsets, world travel, fine wines, good food and each other. As often as possible and not necessarily in that order. They currently seek a congenial publisher for their "Frisky after Sixty" book ('A Good in Bed Read') and after many requests from friends all over the world waiting impatiently for their local newspapers to carry this column. To find out more go to Frisky After Sixty.

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