Did you know you can turn the ceiling fan to whirl the other way in winter? Supposedly, though I can't say I've noticed the difference, it pulls the cooler air up to lessen the chill in the room below, forcing the warmer air to circulate in the lower part of the room. In December, when the snow is thicker than Danny Bloomingdale who lived three doors down and, at 16 still managed to sometimes tie his shoelaces together, and icicles drip like frozen snot from the gutters of your house, there's no such thing as warm air. It's all cold, but just in different shades.
Freezing, bloody freezing and frozen.
But what if it works, even just a little? What if the change of direction makes those air particles dance a different jig? What if it does go from frozen to bloody freezing to freezing, the change so tiny it's only noticeable as a few less ice crystals in your breath? But it's worked nonetheless?
A miniscule change is still a change. Just because you can't see it or taste or feel it, that doesn't mean it hasn't occurred. Isn't that how chaos theory works, at least partly? Every thought, action and even breath has an effect on something else? Six degrees of separation between you sitting on the loo and a tree falling down in Mexico.
So the ceiling fan, spinning its little head off, backwards, can alter the temperature in a room. A fraction less cold, your mood can improve by an equal tenth of a degree, the difference between kicking the cat out and shooing him through the door. On the one hand the cat runs into the middle of the road, screeching. On the other, it pads out, wondering what the white, wet stuff is sticking to its fur. The car swerves to avoid little puss or passes by happily, the driver singing along to a 80's rock classic. The car hits the pushchair carrying the new born baby, narrowly missing the mother on their way back from being shown off to the new grandparents.
Or the mother pushes through her gate and gratefully enters the warmth.
The driver, later commits suicide because he can't live with the death of a baby, not knowing that, though you never get used to it, you can get through each day, always being eaten away at, but with always more to be eaten. Or he hurries home to his own family.
The mother wraps puts her baby to bed, or she begins to randomly kill drivers of 2008 Ford Focuses, desperate to find the driver of the car that smashed into her child. Until she is caught. Until she is sectioned. Until she is interned under the care of one Dr Henry Connors.
Until she makes the acquaintance of a man who used to be called Sin Matthews and is now simply known as Sin.
She cries most of the time, mourning the loss of a little girl she'd known for nine months but held for only a few hours. I offer her an arm, a shoulder, a tissue. All are gratefully received but none can fill the gap. None can even stand on the edge of the abyss and look down, dizzy at the darkness below.
The little things matter. It is, apparently, all in the details.
You can turn the ceiling fan to whirl the other way in winter. Remember that some day.
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