It’s been exceptionally cold here today, and tonight is undoubtedly the coldest of the present cold spell. There’s a cat flap in the door that leads outside from my kitchen. It has thick ice on the inside, so I’m pondering whether I need to put a heater in there to reduce the risk of frozen pipes after I’ve gone to bed. There are sheets of ice on the insides of all the windows, too. And I’ve brought extra heating into my office, because 12C isn’t a comfortable temperature to sit in. The problem with all this extra heating, though, is that it costs a lot of money, and money is something I’ve become conditioned to conserve manically, not squander on trying to be comfortable. It goes against the grain with me to do that.
I managed to find two hours of TV programmes to watch tonight. Sitting in front of a coal fire watching those was OK, even though the cold air being dragged down the stairs was keeping one hand tingling while the other was hot. I don’t mind that; I’m used to it. I’ve spent a lot of my life in old, draughty, inadequately-heated houses.
One of the programmes was a TV drama, about a middle aged man who becomes obsessed with an attractive younger woman. He was an ordinary man – a taxi driver by occupation. He was intelligent, sensitive and well-meaning. But he had pressures weighing him down. A gambling addiction, a disabled wife who needed constant care, and a teenage daughter who had to be enrolled in a ‘good’ school because society regards that sort of thing as important these days. Getting a good school when you’re a lowly taxi driver isn’t easy, and it was making him feel inadequate.
The younger woman stood out like a beacon in his bleak life, and his obsession with her grew until it began to turn his mind. When she reciprocated his feelings and a relationship began, the seeds of his destruction were sown. He’d told her that his wife was dead, and when her ex-lover threatened to expose his lie, anger and panic made him flip. He ran the ex down in his taxi and killed him. It ended with the poor protagonist being given a fifteen year jail term.
It was a cold, powerful story, made all the more powerful for me because, although the details of the situation were unfamiliar, the pressures and emotions weren’t. I understood it too well, and it left me feeling almost as bleak as him.
So now I sit here at the computer feeling physically chilled and emotionally empty. Not depressed, you understand, just coldly reflective. And the thought of my little bird companions, out there in that unforgiving frost and darkness, doesn’t help. Did I say the cold is intense tonight? It is.
So now I’ve got that off my chest, I can post it. I don’t expect any comments; I just wanted to say it for some reason. Tomorrow will be different, I expect.
No comments:
Post a Comment