FIONA McCANNOn the end of the world
THERE IS NOTHING like a bit of extreme weather to make a country come over all pull-togetherish. At least that’s how it seemed during the Bitter Chill of Oh-Ten, or the Fantastic Fuar, as one colleague named it. All it took was a flurry or two and suddenly we were all helping each other up off our slippery arses, pushing cars up and down hills, and greeting our neighbours with a newfound chummery, as if we’d all come through the Battle of the Somme together.
What with the big snow and everyone banging on about The Road, it all got fierce end-of-days around here. This may explain the glee. There's nothing that cheers us up more around these parts than everything going tits up. It was certainly a welcome diversion from the anti-climactic slump that is your average January. The great thing about it was how quickly the apocalypse (a smattering of snow so paltry even the Inuits don't have a word for it) triggered a whole new world order.
No sooner had a few flakes fallen than the very fabric of society was rent asunder and all bets were off: school was cancelled outright, and the half the workforce took to arriving to the office at arbitrary hours and skipping out with glee at the first sight of an overcast sky. In this post-apocalyptic world into which we were ushered by snow fall in winter, cars were abandoned willy-nilly along eerily quiet streets, while pedestrians minced bravely down the middle of the road.
Fashion senses were numbed by the plummeting temperatures, and those who did venture outdoors did so in the kind of layered and mismatched clobber that wouldn’t have seen daylight in a pre-apocalyptic Ireland. Large parts of the country even stopped showering.
So there we were, stranded and fending for ourselves, sending courageous parties out to forage for fags and chocolate at the nearest Spar, and revelling in our new-found common ground with every neighbour who popped his nose out the door to comment delightedly on how far back this would set the country.
Fending, foraging and not having to shower are all well and good, but the thing about an apocalypse is that you start to realise how utterly useless you'd be if push came to shove, as it apparently did in the aisles of various supermarkets, where the general camaraderie gave way to people gouging each other's eyes out for the last tin of Campbell's soup. The problem is, when it all comes down and society is upended, one's skill set does suddenly appear alarmingly unimpressive. Like, where in The Roaddo they require someone with computer-programming skills or a marketing degree to step up to the plate? Because if it all does go pear-shaped, you'd want to have something practical to offer up as justification for your preservation if you want to avoid becoming somebody's dinner.
Put baldly, it suddenly seemed pertinent to ask the pressing question, what can I do that will ensure other people don’t eat me? Yet as the snow came down and I made a mental list of my skills, it seemed so few of them were transferable to this post-apocalyptic scenario. Pretty good at Twitter? Know several keyboard shortcuts and the lyrics of chart-toppers from the 1980s? Can raise both eyebrows independently of each other? Not so high priority those, when it comes to the world falling apart. Picture a crowd of starving apocalypse survivors amassing to discuss how to procure the next meal. Viggo Mortensen steps out from the crowd, all beardy and leader-like: “For God’s sake! Can’t any of you tweet this?”
Yet scrambling through a list of certainly unhelpful characteristics – terrible cook, bad blood circulation, don’t like cold toilets – I found one that might just get me through. Adaptability. A ha! Finally something that would guarantee my survival. I pride myself on my adaptability, and it is of tremendous use when the blizzards start hitting the fan. One need only look at the alacrity with which I embraced the stay-at-home concept once the snow hit the ground. All it took was one whiff of the new shower-free utopia and I was right on board. I set about confirming my adaptability by wearing my pyjamas under my clothes, dining on items foraged from my own kitchen (add to skill set: ability to stomach almost anything, in terms of food) and making fires (with Christmas cards and firelighters. One must use what’s to hand.)
All this introspection was largely prompted by my husband’s casual mention that when freezing cold in the wilderness, one can warm one’s hands by cutting people open and inserting them into said people’s bodies. People, like, say, spouses.
This disturbs me. We are trudging through the snow to Glasnevin in Dublin for dinner, and it feels like a trek through the Himalayas. Only a bit flatter. I can’t see two metres in front of me, and all of Cabra is deserted. Husband has been walking for 45 minutes now and I am aware that he is both cold and hungry.
In this post-apocalyptic wasteland, he could do anything. Snowblinded, cabin-fevered, his brain slowly numbing from the arctic temperatures, who’s to say what this man would be capable of?
“I’ve just seen two snowflakes that were exactly alike,” he tells me. I feel safer already.
