Cold and dark but alive

One thing I’ve been painfully aware of as of late is the rise in electricity prices. In Denmark it’s possible to see how much electricity costs per hour (we have this kind of arrangement with our provider; an alternative is to pay a fixed rate). We’re going through a cold spell, with temperatures below zero for several days now. The air is still, there is zero wind. In a country that draws on wind energy to keep its homes and buildings powered, this is bad news. Photo (a screenshot) shows the hour-by-hour cost of electricity today. Just a few weeks ago, during a particularly windy period, electricity prices were next to zero. Free electricity, at least for a few hours in the day.

Not that I’ve had the chance to enjoy the cold spell, vinterbarn style (winter child: taking long walks through a frozen landscape, camera in hand). I’ve had a bad cold since Sunday; something I must have picked up at Friday's Christmas party at work. I’m popping paracetamol to check my fever, swallowing spoonfuls of cough syrup to make myself sleep, resisting the impulse to take sumatriptan knowing it won’t make a difference. I’m not good for any writing or drawing at the moment, nor any school-related work, nor outdoor exercise, nor any exercise for that matter.

 It’s a bleak and dark December: we turn off all the lights in the house except where we are sitting/working. So do the neighbors. On our street, the Christmas fairy lights are conspicuously absent. And although we do what we can to save on electricity, we still have to pay the exorbitant cost of heating, which has just about doubled this year over last.

Yet this, from a December 12 article in Time magazine: “… at any given moment at least two and as many as ten million Ukrainians have no power, heating, or water because Russia is systematically targeting Ukraine’s utilities—its nervous system—with rocket and drone strikes.”

A bad winter this.