I May Be Some Time

Friday 27th January

It took a day of hangover to get over the evening of drinking. Then we got stuck in a snowdrift. And then the car could only manage to drive halfway home. And so we walked, in the freezing cold, through 25cm thick snow, up a mountain.

Left to my own devices, I'd have stayed in the car, slept there in the warm, and seen if things looked better in the morning. But instead we walked. And left to my own devices, I'd probably have died.

You see, I'm not very good with pain. And I'm especially not good with exhaustion, even when not combined with cold. And I do get exhausted quite easily. So I was tempted, really tempted many times, to just lie down in the snow and...what? Sleep through it? Give up? I don't know.

After a great deal of stress and shouting, we finally got to the house I'm calling home for the moment. It was probably only a half hour journey, but it felt timeless. Then I stepped in through the front door, and promptly slipped on the ice, nearly braining myself against the wall.

A bit more stress and a bit more shouting, and another half hour of lying on the floor of the living room, gasping to get breath back, slowly recovering in front of the heater.

Multiple cups of hot sweet tea, and a change out of cold wet clothes. And then, somewhat inevitably, a blackout. All electricity gone, and, it turned out, water too. No more heater, no more lights.

But at least plenty of wooly, fleecy blankets to sleep under.

In the morning, power restored, sun shining, and almost all the snow magically melted away.

Hot days, cold nights, hot summers, cold winters - that's the middle east climate. I'm writing this at 8pm on Saturday, with thermal underwear, a hoodie, socks folded on my feet for double thickness, and air conditioning on full hot blast. There's four thick blankets available, and I'm thinking of making the bed and crawling under them, just to be comfortable.

What I hallucinated from the cold. Or the alcohol. Either that, or art galleries with surrealist Happenings have nothing on tacky hotel lobbies. Which do you think is more likely?