Of the making of many books there is no end…..
"It is so cold in here. My hands in fingerless gloves find writing these words difficult. There is not much light from this single candle flickering in the draft that comes under the heavy curtain covering the window. Outside it is still snowing as it has been for days, weeks and months. It will continue to fall for years if not forever. The heating stopped working a week ago and though I have an almost unlimited supply of food and drink I know that unless I can find a way of keeping warm in here I will have to leave this building and look for somewhere else to continue my writing. Writing. A strange thing to do after years of typing on keyboards and working with a mouse, but there is no power left to run my laptop and the batteries will eventually run out. The last thing I did before the final power-cut was to fully charge the battery and the spares then shut down. Who knows why or when I will start it again. Some sort of nostalgia makes me keep it. The last connection to a world that is gone."
She pauses for a moment. Takes a couple of deep breaths and then continues writing.
"There is so much more for me to write and though my fingers are cold the importance of what I have to write and the urgency of my situation cuts through the discomfort of the falling temperature. My fingers holding the pencil are the only points of contact with the freezing air, apart from my nose. But it seems important to record this, to save the details so that someone, anyone, may read this and know some of what happened. The rest of my body is swathed in thermal underwear, thick thermal socks, fur lined boots, woollen shirt and jumper enclosed in a padded insulated ski-suit and a balaclava covered by a fur-lined hat with ear muffs.
A red woollen scarf wrapped round my face and my eyes covered by snow goggles through which I can see the paper and watch the pencil as it fills pages with these words. When I leave this place (and it is only a matter of time before I must) to set out into the snow, wind, ice and twilight, I have a padded jacket and heavy thermal gloves that will provide one final layer between the elements and me and a rucksack into which I will put the laptop and batteries (I have wrapped them in a space blanket to protect them from the cold) and as much food and drink as I can carry.
Whether I will be able to walk in this cocoon I have created in an attempt to delay the cold from reaching my bones I don’t know. Every so often I stop and eat. Mostly high protein and sugar as well as drinking hot soup and tea every few hours. I have connected a tube from the relevant part of my body to a large empty, but slowly filling, plastic container through the front of my lower clothing, sealing the gap in the poppers and round the tube with tape to stop any cold air penetrating my body so that I can pee when I need to without taking off any of my clothes or leaving the chair and desk at which I am writing. The disposal of my solid waste products will eventually be a problem, but I will deal with that when it becomes unbearable. The toilet is next door and though the water in it is frozen solid there is a remnant of civilised behaviour that makes me see it as the ‘right place’ to perform that function. I may have to light a fire in there to make removing the minimum amount of clothing bearable. The candle gives out a ring of flickering light that illuminates the page, the table and my face. It casts long shadows into the corners of this room that is empty save for the rails that line the walls filled with dozens of beautiful and ornate costumes for dramas, operas and ballets."
She stops to read through what she has written. Sits for a moment. Completely still. She starts to write again.
"I have already written dozens of pages, many of them transcribed from the laptop in the last few weeks when I knew that it was only a matter of time before the power went off and would not come on again. The literary merit of this writing is probably not great and of course there is always the question of whether anyone will read it. But I am driven by a need to get this down, to record the details, complexity and, yes, simplicity and stupidity of how we have ended in this cold place at the beginning of this endless winter.
Enough of my situation for the moment, of indulging myself in writing about my fears and what little hope I have of finding somewhere else where the circumstances will be better. I know I must try. If I stay here much longer I will die. Of that I am certain as already I can feel the cold creeping into my being through the extremities of my body. It feels important to give whoever may read this an idea of who it is that has written these words. The only other real problem I have is how to protect the sheets of paper on which this journal has been written. I have sorted them into bundles that I have triple sealed in plastic bags and wrapped in heavy-duty cloth backed tape (an heirloom from the props and stage management department of the theatre in the school where I found boxes full of it). Should I take them with me or leave them here? A stupid question really, as I know I must find somebody to give them to or somewhere safe to leave them. So that one day they will be read and may cast some light on what has happened here. Now I return to the chronicle of events that disperse outwards from a single point to circle round over time and then back to where they started from"
Cut to close up of her hand writing long flowing text that gradually fills the screen
"Dorothy had watched the rain falling outside her bedroom window since early morning and it was now mid afternoon. It hadn’t bothered her much as there wasn’t anything in particular she wanted to do outside. True, it was the summer holidays and normally she would be out on the beach or walking the path along the tops of the cliffs, watching the gulls swoop and glide between the pillars of grey and purple stone that fell away from the land like great slices of multi-coloured cake......."
Expand word 'Cake' until it fills the screen
Zoom out to show full page.
Dissolve to grey.