EPT
In the cold yesterday, I’d noticed that my phone was behaving a little unusually; apparently, the cold weather negatively effects lithium-ion batteries. It’s not so very dreadful a thing for phones, since they tend to be kept relatively close to the skin – they’re kind of a part of us, if we’re to take the example from the cyborg manifesto. The one thing I hadn’t at all banked on was that I’d see a similar issue start to arise with my own body.
For the most part, I managed to have an uneventful trip home today, traffic aside. That’s until the last two miles or so, when I took it into my head that the walk would do me good. I had been worried that I might not make it to a shop tomorrow, so I stocked up on various bits and pieces to make it through what looked like a day of forced telecommuting.
The walk home is a pleasant one, taking me through the Phoenix Park, which benefits greatly from being snowbound. The snow isn’t nearly the soft, undulating white blanket that had been spread across most of Dublin, but an awkward array of drifts and small hillocks, the wind spraying the still-powdery snow from their tops to roll gently across the shadows behind.
The lamps are all gas, and infrequently spaced, so the prevailing colour is the sodium orange leaking from the city. It’s normally a dull, orange-brown, but the snow, bright as it is, manages to reflect enough of the bright orange to turn it yellow. Instead of that dull due, I found myself presented with what amounts to a rolling, earthbound sunset, bright enough to be blinding, I was forced to keep my eyes to the horizon.
As I walked home, I realised that I was, despite the wind and chilling cold, feeling very warm indeed. It’s something I know the human body does, of course; if you find yourself in an environment colder than you’re used to, the body tends to kick up some heat, burning some energy to make sure you get through things alright… all of which would be fine, if I didn’t already have a blood sugar issue.
I’ll try not to sound like and old man when I say this, but I walked for two miles in the inches-deep slow, slogging along, smashing jelly-beans into my face as though there were no tomorrow, feeling like a walking furnace. I am, in essence, a teetering engine, like a steam train running out of coal. For the duration of my walk, I feel like an unstoppable force, just one that will burn itself out shortly.
I did, fortunately enough, make it back to the gate beside my house in time, by the way, though by then I was well into blurry eyes and shakey hands territory. It’s not quite so bad as you might imagine, but unfortunately, when I’d reached the gate, whipped off my gloves and reached for my key, pushing it into the lock for the first time in days. It won’t fit. I have two keys, so I try the second, to the same effect.
I stood then, behind a gate, transfixed by my own inability to undo a lock, the halogen lamp behind the gate picking out the bright blue of my hoodie and throwing it across the snow in front of me… so I stood in a puddle of reflected baby-blue and thought,
“This is it, I’m pretty much done. I’ll need to eat or drink something soon and the walk to another entrance is 20-30 minutes in good weather. I’ll just tweet my own eulogy and hope someone thinks to call a doctor…”
Then, MacGyver instincts kicking in, I realised that I’m probably warm enough, as a rapidly cooling human being, to melt the ice inside the lock, so I pressed my lips to the cold, cold steel of the lock and breathed into it, to whatever extent I could, for about a minute and a half, frozen, face at chest height, hanging from the grille of the gate.
Tried the key again, no progress. This was something that could take some time.
At some point, it struck me that the wind would likely have kept the keyhole on the opposite side ice-free. After about two minutes of scrabbling, fingernails hunting across the cracked ice on the lock for a keyhole, I managed to unlock the gate and stagger home for a cup of tea and some Hobnobs.
Didn’t have the nerve to tell the sister about my minor “I’m going to die here” episode though. That’s a bit close to me.
