Imagine …
You are late for school pick up, needing to send an urgent parcel. You calculate you can just about get to the Post Office, and to School in time as long as Lance from the Shove Ha’penny stall at the Fair isn’t ahead of you in the queue.
You burst through the door of the post office, only one till point open, number 6. Lance isn’t there. Margery from the Fair is in the queue, but you are confident she won’t have lots of ‘shrapnel’ (ask an over 60) to change up. Margery isn’t allowed to deal with loose change since, what has become known as, the ‘refrigerator incident’.
Only one other lady, wearing a rather jaunty paisley scarf, is in the queue. She has just one small envelope, and doesn’t appear to have a stash of eBay sales to post in her bag.
You are quietly confident you will make it to school in time.
‘Next, till number 6 please’ … Margery moves to the till point and the queue shuffles forward.
Nearly there. Margery only has a small pink envelope to post, so is very quick.
‘Next, till number 6 please’ … nothing, no movement at all. The ‘jaunty scarf’ lady at the front of the queue is just standing there, it is as if she hasn’t heard, complete blank look on her face. 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds pass – still she doesn’t move. Flipping heck.
40 seconds, 1 minute, 80 seconds … crickey – these seconds are getting longer.
Okay, this is serious. You don’t want to make a scene by actually speaking to someone in a public place. So, you try a special ohmmming technique to try to get the ‘jaunty scarf’ lady to move. You concentrate really really hard on her legs. Nothing nothing at all.
It’s as if the messages cannot go from your brain to her legs.
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PS: This incident didn’t actually happen – I didn’t actually try to get the ladies legs moving – I am not totally doolally. However, I think it describes how messages to move leave my brain, but get lost enroute, not reaching their destination.
I had read about freezing, but had no idea how it would ‘feel’.
The other day an odd thing happened, I was standing about to walk across the room. I wasn’t thinking ‘I must walk across the room’, I was just going to ‘do it’ without thinking. It was only when I couldn’t move my legs that I realised that I wanted to walk across the room.
(Now I’ve even lost myself in my rambling … sorry please try and keep up)
I then tried to move my legs and I couldn’t. I tried really hard, especially the ‘ohhmmmming’ technique. But nothing.
Then I gradually managed to do some arm swinging and started marching and then star jumping and then running round the room.
Ho hum Diddley dee …. if that was freezing, the last sentence was defrosting.
PS don’t know if this was freezing, but it probably was. My body was whispering a new symptom again ….
LES
