what cold does

What cold does.

Last winter we had a minus 22, I've known minus 40 once or twice here too and it makes everything different.

The ice glitters in the air. This is not snow, though it settles as snow might settle; it is more of the consistency of caster sugar and you could blow it off a surface rather than wipe.

When the day is clear it shimmers in the sunlight, like a world sized shoal of minuscule silver fish, swirling before you and rising behind, cars on the road whip up a train as though they were crossing a desert comprised entirely of self raising flour.

The sky can be deep blue, brilliantly blue, but the sunshine is pale for all its brightness, the light is white, sometimes a little blue.

Steam rises from drains and buildings and faces, but it will stop rising after a few meters as the vapor liquidizes and then freezes into infinitesimal crystal of ice.

As house hold dust is said to be mainly human skin, so it could seem that all this ice dust is human moisture.

It cuts into the face, sometimes tears will stream and freeze on cheeks. Runny noses make mustaches into tiny arctic mountain ranges. In the time it takes to take off gloves to light a cigarette hands begin to sting. The cigarettes, after the first few puffs stop working as the moisture from mouths blocks the filters with ice, chewing them warm again s the only way out.

Nose hairs freeze immediately you step out the door and when you spit, if you spit upwards it can freeze before it hits the ground and so skitter along the surface like a flat stone skimming on water.

People run into shops as though it were raining heavily and cafes become havens.

When I was a kid someone told me that when Eskimos speak their words freeze in the air and their friends read them rather than hear them.