"Relativity," June 2023 Holmes Minor Monthly Prompt

[gardnerhill]

Title: Relativity
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: ACD (in my "Wounded Warriors" series)
Pairing: John Watson & Corporal Henry Wood
Word Count: 221b
Rating: G
Warning: None
Summary: One man's balmy spring is another's heat wave.
Author's Notes: Written for the June 2023 Holmes Minor monthly prompt, "collar."

***



At the Aldershot tavern The Musket and Shot, off-duty soldiers at an adjoining table blew and gasped, red-faced, downing their beer. "Blimey, I was feeling the collar at guard-change," puffed one crimson lad with an accent straight from Northumberland.

Corporal Henry Wood buried his face in his porter to hide his grin. Pursing my own lips, I murmured, "Surely they don't mean this balmy spring day?"

"Balmy? My dear Captain, it's downright chilly." My nut-brown companion wore a wool coat, even as July sun beat down outside and his fellow soldiers sweltered at their exercises.

I'd worn a wool coat as well but had shed it indoors. "You did spend more time in India than I, Corporal. And returned more recently."

The bent-backed older man, his body permanently crooked from maltreatment by his captors, took a fortifying draught of his hearty beverage. "Aye, well. I may have a bit of a laugh at their expense when the day's like this, Watson. But the rest of the time? It's as if I've moved to a land where it's always winter."

Decades of acclimation to tropical heat would not readily leave a man so soon returned to this cold northern island.

I finished my pint. "Corporal? I propose we take advantage. Let's walk outside and enjoy that April weather."

The crooked man beamed.

#

Author's Note: "Feeling the collar" is Victorian slang for sweating as one walks.

Comments

[smallhobbit]

True, it's all relative!

[gardnerhill]

Taken directly from my own visit to Scotland - the locals were puffing and gasping in an 80-degree day in June while California-girl me was enjoying the weather. (That night, though, I was shivering under my blanket while my friend was happily discarding hers in her warm room.)

[smallhobbit]

I'd be with the locals. We were in Italy at the end of October one year, wandering around in t-shirts while the locals had their jackets firmly buttoned up.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Ah, I prefer a bit of heat myself but it is relative.

[gardnerhill]

Indeed. My definition of "cold" as a California girl makes Minnesotans snicker - that's the kind of weather in which they go shirtless and try to get a tan.

[scfrankles]

It's always lovely to see this particular set of friends ^__^ And it's another interesting bit of slang you've introduced me to.

[gardnerhill]

Thanks. I like revisiting these two, also.

Victorian slang is the gift that keeps on giving.