No, it's okay, I haven't moved to Russia or anything. I was tempted to name this post after the famous Russian toast ("Your Health") when an American friend in Dalarna alerted me to a story about elephants being fed giant shots of vodka in Russia to ward off the chill. "Oh, great!" I thought. I have a very impressionable dog and two easily led cockatiels who saw this headline and now they are begging me to be shipped off to a Russian zoo. I try to tell them, "Hey, it’s not all vodka and wine in the zoo you know", but they won’t listen. Party animals! And it was not just vodka the animals are getting - the story goes on:



I always thought reindeer were used to the cold. But, I don't know. Maybe that's why Rudolph's always got that red nose. Let's hope they don't follow the trend of the human population there.

As an aside, I wonder what an elephant sees when it has had a few too many buckets of vodka? Flying pink people?

And to show you that people here in Sweden are not immune from the insanity of being out in the cold:



Yes, people these are Swedish surfers, photographed at Torö beach, just down the road from here. The wind is blowing at 15m/s (30 knots), it's -6C and snowing. Be totally honest here - is your first though when you hear that "Hey! Surf's up! Let's go catch a wave!"

Exactly.

What in God's name am I doing living here?