Braving a cold war
By Sheryl-Lee Kerr
I sit here, all ashiver in icicle-nosed splendor, blue of skin,
fingers and mood, and wondering why it is I so hate winter.
After
much thought, I have decided it is because it’s v-very c...
(please
insert the word “cold’’ - my fingers have frozen prematurely).
I think the whole concept of getting out of bed when the
thermometer
is too chilled to even rouse itself above a single digit is
cruelty
beyond words.
I dream of bitter temperatures being a legitimate sickie excuse,
where one can ring up the boss in all earnestness and squeak out
through
chattering teeth: “Can’t ... make it ... out of ... b-b-bed ...
today ... too c-c-cold. Need my blankie.’’
The other morning, it was so cold my doona cracked when I moved
it.
Well, it was either that or my fingers - it was hard to tell, as
I
had lost all sensation in my extremities a while back.
After a few brave but futile attempts to emerge from my snug
cocoon
- but never getting the doona past nose level before panicked
visions
of the dawn of the ice age flooded my senses - I did manage to
get feet
to floor.
I then needed a chisel to crack open my socks, boiling water to
un-cement the toothpaste and a hair dryer to defrost my cat so
she
could get more than a half-strangled miaow out. (Although I
still
have strong suspicions I
was actually defrosting the neighbor’s still missing chihuahua - I’ll let you
know when she properly dethaws.)
That morning, in the curious illogical logic which comes from a
cold-numbed brain, I decided the bike I ride to work should
really
be modified for wet-weather grip. My brain duly produced visuals
and
design plans for a homemade contraption comprising toothpicks
superglued to my tyres, gripping that road like a rottweiler
with a
newspaper. But I decided not to proceed lest I started skewering
bug life, native marsupials and occasionally small children of
the
variety parents seem to be quite fond of. I am a humanitarian,
after all.
So I treadled valiantly (and untoothpicked) forth, the air so
cold
that at every traffic light my breath was fogging up the nearby
car
windows.
Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind. A BBC TV special on
the
Titanic said many people in the water died - not of drowning or
hypothermia - but of lack of oxygen, because they began to
breathe
shallower and shallower to stop the sharp pain of inhaling freezing
air. So I opened my mouth and sucked in a hearty lungful of prime
A-grade oxygenated Adelaide air (because dying from oxygen
deprivation on a bicycle would be incredibly embarrassing).
Mum was right all along. Your face really does freeze like that.
By the time I arrived at work, boasting twisted gargoyle
features,
my blueish hands had sealed solidly around the handlebars. Of
course, I
did get a few funny looks as I sat down at my computer.
You’d think nobody had seen someone typing with handlebars
frozen to
their hands before ...
© Sheryl-Lee Kerr & The Advertiser, 30 JUN 1998