Localised icy patches

Mondays can be strange days. Some can be great and some can be odd.

I think today would have to fall into the odd category.

I was up and ready bright and early this morning. I looked out of the window and saw that the weather was clear. No fog, snow, rain, wind, and only a few clouds in the sky. Everywhere looked calm and still.

I walked to my car, as I do every morning. Other cars were parked around and were free from frost. Mine wasn’t. Mine was frosted over. It was only a thin film of frost on my car, but it was visible. The other cars were frost free… I had to double check. ‘That’s very odd’, I thought to myself. Luckily, I didn’t need to use my scraper to clear the windows, the windscreen wipers took care of that, but I had a strip of ice all the way down  the right hand side of my front windscreen, and the left hand side of my rear window.

I drove around a couple of streets where there were other cars parked along the sides of the road, and not one of these cars were covered in frost either. I parked up briefly to call into a shop, and then returned to my car. As I drove away, another car pulled up behind me. This car too had a strip of ice down the right hand side of the windscreen.

At least I had some confirmation that there was some very localised icy patches. You normally think of towns or regions when the weather forecasters refer to localised patches, not cars. Still, it’s a new experience I suppose! I didn’t see any further cars with ice on them on the rest of the journey to work.

In work, the day didn’t go particularly quickly. The minutes seemed like hours, and the hours seemed like days. Plenty of time then to get things done, if I had something to do. The day actually started with me having something to do, but due to the time I had available to me, it was all done very quickly. I still had about seven hours to work, so found myself going over the same thing again and again.

I found myself starting to feel very, very sleepy. My eyelids were heavy, and I found myself listening to the hum of the computers, the clicks of the keyboards from my colleagues behind me, and the strange hissing sound that the air conditioning in the office makes. It is more like a mixture of a hiss and a buzz and a hum. Outside of my office building is a road to a huge building which I think is a distribution centre for something. Large lorries use this road, and have to manoeuvre quite sharp corners, in reverse gear, so their trailers can be loaded. So, on top of all the humming, buzzing, hissing, clicking, was a rumbling and a bleeping.

The noises were kind of hypnotic. They all blended together and became a very relaxing rhythm. As I was feeling sleepy, my breathing was deeper and slower. I had to do something to keep myself awake. Falling asleep while at work is not generally promoted. I had to open the window. I needed air. I needed oxygen!

The office I work in is strange. The thermostat that regulates the temperature for the room is hidden behind a very hot computer monitor, so it thinks that the room is warmer than it is and tries to compensate by keeping the room cold. This system doesn’t work very well when the windows are open, but sometimes they need to be opened so the room can warm up a little. The only problem with opening the windows is that the thermostat gets very confused, and the room has pockets of warm air and pockets of cold air.

And, as my car was first thing this morning, I was now sat in a pocket of icy cold air. The area around the thermostat was a lot warmer, but the room wasn’t in balance. I had a choice to make: To freeze, to breath or to sleep. I couldn’t sleep, and need to breath so I had to freeze. I managed for about half an hour and then closed the window.

Luckily, the freezing, and subsequent sudden movements to close the window kept me awake, and brought lunchtime. When I returned to work after lunch, the temperature in the office was a little more pleasant. The time was still moving along at a very slow pace, but the tiredness I had experienced in the morning had gone. Well, gone from me and into two of my colleagues at the other end of the office.

Like I said. A strange Monday. Hopefully Tuesday will be a little busier, and livelier. With fewer localised icy patches. We’ll see…