On Tuesday morning my Tube line was down. This is a pain any day of the week but when it’s 36 degrees outside and you haven’t slept in several sweltering nights, being forced onto a packed bus with 85 other people who are also sweating through their button-downs, late for work, and screaming down their phones to alert their colleagues about it, I did start to wonder what god I had offended and which limb I could sacrifice to make it all go away.
I could feel my skin burning through the glass windows, was pouring the contents of my water bottle down my neckline and was bent double to avoid my sodden back making any kind of contact with the seat. I think I might have started crying at one stage, but there was so much moisture everywhere it’s impossible to say.
By the time I got to the office, after 40 minutes of this torture, I was a lost cause. The air conditioning was not enough to re-regulate my temperature or my mood. I felt completely feral. I couldn’t focus on anything. I went home early to avoid rush hour, where I turned on my £20 Amazon fan, took off all my clothes, and ate half a rotisserie chicken with my bare hands.
I’m not built for this. My blood is cold and Celtic. I haven’t been able to walk 100 yards down the road without stopping for a break in a Sainsbury’s Local to cool down in the Meat, Fish and Poultry aisle. Most of my plans this week have been cancelled because nobody I know can face it. Leaving the house means weighing up whether the air con at the destination is worth the risk of expiration on the journey.
But then yesterday, I walked to the gym. I would obviously rather have died than go to Pilates in this heat but I stood to lose £5 if I missed it, which is actually worse than death, so I went, and after that penance I remembered that upstairs they have a cold plunge. The gods had forgiven me! I hit the stopwatch, lowered myself in, did some very deep breathing, and two minutes of stabbing pains to my outer extremities later I felt free of panic, anger and frenzy for the first time in days.
People – including, unfortunately, me – are always banging on about the mental health benefits of cold water. But this isn’t really about my wellbeing – it’s about everyone else’s. I really think I’d have grown violent had I not lowered my body temperature. I spent the next hour switching between 15 minutes outside in a bathrobe, playing on my phone – you’re meant to go in the sauna, but fat chance of that – and three minutes dunked in the 7-degree plunge. It kept me cool for more than an hour after I went home. So I had a thought. Could getting there extra early before work the next day fortify me for the commute?
I think I’ve cracked it. A couple of three-minute plunges (I’d hoped for a 45-minute session, but only had time to get in the water twice) kept me cool for my 50-minute journey to work and about an hour after. Others arrived at the office flustered and raging. One of them immediately marched off for a cold shower – but even then, the water never gets cold enough to give you an icy shock. Without a towel, she just put her clothes straight on her wet body to keep her cool. I, meanwhile, insufferably smug, demanded people press their hands to my skin and witness the miracle.
But obviously, there’s a catch. This is not a sustainable solution to the summer commute, because cold plunges are prohibitively expensive and often only accessible at posh spas, upmarket gyms and pay-as-you-go saunas. I would never usually use any of my few precious monthly workout credits on something like this, but I’ve been a bit lax this month and they were going to expire and sadly it led me to a nirvana I can’t afford.
An individual session at my gym won’t get you much change out of £26, community saunas with plunges – popping up everywhere around the country – cost minimum £9. DIY it? An entry level tub – which you have to fill with your own ice – costs about £75, a properly chilled plunge set-up will set you back about £8000, by which point you may as well get air conditioning installed.
I’m priced out of surviving this inferno. My only hope is another long, lukewarm shower.
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