Chilling experiences ...

The wintry conditions are causing trouble. This post reports a personal injury and trauma caused by frozen pipes, though not quite what you might be imagining.

Temperatures in Helsinki this week have dropped to minus 15 degrees Celsius at times, with clear and sunny skies. The photo shows a spectacular sunset reflected in the windows of my office building, taken just before 4pm on Monday.

I have been glad of the winter tyres in the last 48 hours as we had a fall of snow on Thursday evening. I was visiting another office and parked up around 4pm in clear conditions and when I left around 7:30pm, there was around 2cm of snow over the car. I can understand why my Finnish colleagues look forward to the snow; the increase it has on light levels during the day is very noticeable at this time of year, when things are so dark for much of the time.

As I was driving to work the next day along the Länsiväylä (the Western highway), the view was quite splendid. The sea had frozen on the surface during the week between some of the islands and then the snow had settled on top of the ice. A boat in the middle of the water looked as though it had been left in a field - I have no photo, of course, as I was driving!

The snow accompanied an increase in temperature, though it is still below freezing at night. This morning, despite wearing shoes with commando soles, which I thought would be safest, I slipped and fell over. As often described, it seemed to happen in slow motion; I managed to think about keeping my head up and avoided tensing up. I like to think I went down rather gracefully on to my back. My immediate reaction was then to quickly scan the area to see if anyone had witnessed my embarrassment; fortunately not. The bruises are just now beginning to hurt - heaven knows how I will feel after ice skating with my team, we are planning to go next Wednesday evening. Fortunately, the hospitals here are fairly used to dealing with winter injuries, so whatever happens I should be in good hands.

The frozen pipes were not here in Finland but back home, near Winchester in the UK, where the temperatures also fell below minus 10 last night. My wife called today, concerned that none of the toilets would flush and there was no water coming out of any of the taps. After a short phone tutorial on domestic plumbing, she performed suitable diagnostics in the loft and elsewhere and we concluded that the supply pipe to the house must have frozen. Thankfully, after a few more hours and also running some hot water down the drain that runs alongside the supply, the situation resolved itself. It's at times like these that I most feel the difficulties of not being there to help. She did point out that this problem was not really my fault, rather poignant after the episode just before Christmas, when I put a screw through the central heating pipe while doing some DIY!

I shall keep my fingers crossed that these are the worst problems the cold weather will cause us. At present there is a 5 degree difference in the temperatures between my two homes - surprisingly, perhaps, it is plus 2 Celsius here in Helsinki and minus 3 back in Old Alresford.