Ice to see you

Thursday night involved going out for the work, end-of-year do. Our company works on a somewhat unusual financial year that runs from July to June, so for us this is our “well done for all the hard work over the last year”.

I was quite excited about the venue for the celebrations, if only because it was being held at The Ice Bar off of

Regent Street

, which is somewhere I’ve always wanted to go (largely as the Ice Hotel was far and away the best thing about “Die Another Day”).

So at about ten to six on Thursday night, I was put in a ridiculous blue hooded cape and ushered through an airlock into the artic temperatures of The Ice Bar. And I can confirm that it’s great fun…for the first ten minutes. After that, the cold really begins to seep into your bones and it becomes a mild form of torture.

Within twenty minutes, our group of twelve had dwindled. By twenty-five minutes, there were just three of us left.

It was 6:15 and I was determined to stay until the end. At this point it was a battle of wills. It was man against nature (albeit artificial and man-made), and I was determined not to quit. I began dancing to the annoyingly repetitive music in an effort to keep warm. At least I’d been in here another ten minutes by this point. I looked at my watch.

6:16.

Are you kidding?! Only one minute had passed?! One measly minute!

It felt like much longer. Maybe the cold was slowing down my circulation. My pulse was thinning. Maybe I was dying and my mind was making time stretch out in order to prolong my consciousness. “No”, I muttered quietly to myself, much to the confusion of the other two, “it can’t be that cold”. I continued the weird frantic dance I was performing in the hopes it would bring warmth to my bones, which were now chilled to their marrow. Whilst dancing I talked with my two remaining compatriots for a good half an hour. Surely it must be time to go now?

6:17.

It’s not time to go, and don’t call me Shirley. At this point all incredulity had left my head. Maybe I had lost higher brain functions. I was shivering involuntarily and I’d lost all feeling in my fingers and toes.

6:18.

Awesome. I kept drinking in the hopes the alcohol would warm my system, but each time I put the frozen ice glass to my lips my whole body would shake.

6:19.

By this point I was expecting to see Death appear in front of me, holding a frozen hourglass that had nearly ran out of sand. The sub-zero temperature was turning the saliva in my mouth into icicles. This really was the end.

And then, finally, it was over. I was back through the airlock and into the relative warmth of the (non glacial) bar. I was still shivering fifteen minutes later when I was on my second G&T.

OK, so I may have taken some liberties with the truth of just how cold it got, and ultimately I’m glad for the experience. By the end I genuinely felt like I’d been on an episode of the Japanese game show “Endurance”. And when it comes right down to it, I stayed until the end.

Take that, nature.    

"It’s Uncle Christmas, Santa’s evil twin. He’s the mastermind behind all the Workplace Harassment directed at Rudolph, and has recently been found guilty of hacking people’s voicemails to decide whether or not they should go on the “naughty” list."