Sketches from a snow-trapped artist
Published 15 March 2013
Illustrator Curtis Tappenden took 12 hours to drive home after being trapped by Arctic weather on Monday 11 March – and whiled away his time making a sketchbook record of his ordeal.
As he shivered in his car, eating nothing but snow and occasionally switching on the heater to warm his frozen feet, he drew what he saw – including his own image in his rear-view mirror.
Curtis, a PhD student in the University of Brighton's Centre for Learning and Teaching, previously graduated from the university with a BA(Hons) and MA in illustration.
He had been to Canterbury to deliver a creative writing workshop at the University for the Creative Arts and was heading back to his home in Brighton on Monday evening when traffic ground to an icy halt on the A23 near Pease Pottage.
The 45-year-old was stuck there until the following morning while his family patiently waited back at their home near Preston Circus.
He said: "I had no food or water but to help pass the time I decided to listen to BBC Sussex Radio, write a poem and sketch events that unfolded before me.
"All I had was my trusty 'Mod' Parka and two blankets. My biggest problem was having numb feet and toes. I periodically turned on the engine and put my feet up onto the heating vents to warm them up, then wrapped them in a blanket.
"I was only a quarter of a mile away from Pease Pottage service station but did not feel I could leave the car in case we got going. I hadn't eaten for eight hours – I was very hungry and had no water. No officers came with any food or drink. For hydration I ate snow off the car."
Curtis phoned his wife Susanne and texted. He was safe but went without sleep: "I rested and thought a lot and wrote and drew and listened to the local radio which became a line for dialogue between stranded motorists. I added to the 'entertainment' by writing a snow poem in the car then performing it live over the airwaves on the David Miller show.
"It was fun and appreciated by other stranded in their cars. My perception changed quickly as the temperature dropped and I drew myself at one point looking into the interior mirror. Humans tend to turn in on themselves when alone.
"Ambulances and police cars had been speeding down the hard shoulder all evening, but I saw no other physical body."
Curtis turned to a near-empty bottle of screen wash to answer the call of nature: "Needs must."
Then at 3.30am a policeman knocked on Curtis's car window telling him to start his engine: "But we did not move for another hour. Then we crawled and stopped frequently all the way to Brighton. From Pease Pottage to Brighton it took three-and-a-half hours. But time is strange. I got used to waiting, felt content.
Pease Pottage by Curtis Tappenden
"I had drawn, thought, written and was happy but very exhausted. I drove home in second gear over perilously icy roads and Handcross Hill.
"I finally arrived at Preston Circus twelve-and-a-half hours after setting off, and for the rest of the day I suffered a kind of time lag – 11am felt like 5 am.
"This certainly was my longest day."
Curtis's poem:
Grid lock
Grit less
Road stuck
A white mess.
The lights are going out
As we sit, and sit, and sit
The endless wait,
Across the closing evening-
And still we sit…..
I fear we'll be buried deep,
In an icy Sussex pit!
Come save us Highways Agency
From winter Arctic Fate-
I thought I'd get home early this eve,
But now SO very, very late!.......
…or maybe tomorrow?
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