"You are living the good life right now!"

Rum and Raisin. A small, innocuous-looking white tub with a plastic spoon. It's the colour of rum and raisin ice-cream. It's as cold as ice-cream. I can see little things that look like raisins, and when I scoop a spoonful, the texture feels like ice-cream. I know it should simply be rum and raisin ice-cream.

But you always think you know. You think you are in safe waters, that you know what a biscuit tastes like from the look of it and the fact it is offered on a small plate with a doily and comes with your coffee. You think you have found blessed bread, with its bready colour and shape and name. But the bread is brioche or made of corn or has sugar in the middle and your biscuit tastes of soup. A chocolate filling is red bean paste and, if in doubt, most things are probably tofu. Looks can be deceiving.

I gingerly bring the spoon to my mouth. "It's ice-cream!" I cry, jumping off the sofa with a solitary, joyful tear running down my flushed cheek. "It's bloody rum and raisin ice-cream!"

 

The little things matter when you're down. They blow up and inflate in direct relation to your own slow collapse into a sunken, grey frame of mind. In winter, Beijing shops, cafes and restaurants do not offer cold drinks. Outside is polluted, frigid sludge, and inside the beer is lukewarm. I depressed myself daily thinking about post that hadn't made it to us, of a card from my 95-year-old grandma being opened by strangers or how I would rugby tackle anyone wearing orange ASOS heels and drinking Yorkshire Tea. I stopped trying to order at restaurants with no pictures and set myself like concrete in packed tube carriages.

 

The day after the ice-cream revelation my friend arrived to visit and sprung spring simultaneously. I collected her from the airport and told the taxi driver in Chinese to take us to a particular station and that I would direct him from there. I had my coat undone as we walked through the Summer Palace and only wore one pair of trousers - among other clothes - to explore the Forbidden City. She brought K some British ale and my request of a can of dry shampoo.

 

We joined another friend for a meal of malatang, food on sticks you cook in a spicy broth at your table. Our friend, fluent in Chinese, corrected K when he asked for more water in the pot, and the waitress chided, "I understood what he said!" We had cocktails and two hours' sleep, then got on the bullet train to Qingdao on the coast.

 

When we got back, I told my colleague I loved Qingdao. She said, "You are living the good life right now!"

 

Expat friends are also emerging bleary-eyed from winter. We congregate on WeChat daily to discuss the sunshine and the fresh air. "Fuck me!" I begin in my typically articulate manner. "The weather is so good! [smiley face wearing shades]"

 

It is time, lovely readers. Time to shake my pasty legs free of their thermal prison and consider shaving that extra layer of natural hairy warmth. Time to dust off my denim jacket for the brief period between ball-shrivellingly freezing and face-meltingly hot. Time to twirl my parasol (umbrella) like a lady and ask waitresses to keep the cold pijiu coming. Time to turn our sour, bloodless faces skyward and lap up the sun like the thirsty, rained-on British folk we are for the five minutes we've got before we burn as red as the national flag.

 

Restaurants and shops are turning their fridges back on and our freezer is stocked with every flavour of ice-cream. My mate left spring and a can of Batiste in China, and Beijing de kongqi hen hao. Deep breaths.