Out of the cold

Amsterdam's wind, slicing through November, carried a chill that clung to every exposed surface. The city’s canals and cobblestones seemed complicit in amplifying the cold, turning it into something alive, a creature stalking you through the streets. My wife and I wandered aimlessly, our quest for altered consciousness thwarted by two overpriced brownies masquerading as a portal to other realms. Instead, they were a disappointing dessert, leaving us both stone-cold sober and colder still in body and spirit.

We drifted into a café, the promise of heat and caffeine irresistible. The place buzzed with life, a sharp contrast to the icy silence outside. As I navigated the queue, I became aware of a towering figure ahead, a man whose movements betrayed a curious mix of elegance and awkwardness. His profile clicked into recognition: Stephen Merchant. Of course, I didn’t say anything. What does one say to someone famous when one is freezing, unimpressed with Amsterdam’s edibles, and unsure if conversation would add anything to the moment? Instead, I savoured the strange warmth of proximity to someone familiar, albeit in the abstract, as though his presence thawed something intangible in me.

It reminded me of another cold day, another queue. This one outside the French Consulate, South Kensington, London, as I embarked on the labyrinthine process of gaining a French passport. There, too, the cold had a personality, a biting persistence that gnawed at us as we shuffled forward, awaiting our turn. The queue was a peculiar blend of people: young students clutching folders, an older woman wrapped in a fur coat, her perfume cutting through the air like a rebuke to the chill. Behind me, a man stood with the kind of unassuming confidence only the very accomplished can manage. When he stepped forward and spoke his name, it reverberated through the room like a bell: Thierry Henry.

Recognition, again. But more than that, a kind of accidental intimacy in the shared experience of cold, of waiting, of transition. These encounters were fleeting, almost meaningless in their brevity, yet they stayed with me. Perhaps because they offered a brief reprieve, a reminder that even in the cold, we are surrounded by lives infinitely more complex than we imagine.