If you are reading this, you have probably found me dead, frozen, sitting on the long drop.
Why, you may ask?
It all started at noon, December 9, 1998, when I needed to use the loo.
My fellow scientist, Mark, was occupying the laboratory's lavatory, while I was doing my business on the long drop 25m from the lab.
The weather turned to custard and my thermometer dropped to -68degC.
At that point, I could have gone back to the lab, but I decided I would wait for a break in the weather.
Over the two previous days, we had had small bursts of bitter weather that usually lasted less than five minutes.
However, this was not just a small ''sun shower''.
I was stuck in a blizzard.
At that point, there was no way I could escape from the long drop, because the door was frozen shut.
Also, if I had been able to smash down the frost-coated door, I would have been pummelled straight on to the cold, hard ground by an avalanche of snow.
This morning I woke up hungry, shivering and unable to feel my feet.
My ears and face had blistered up with frozen pus and I could no longer hear the wolf-cry of the wind or the constant hammering of the snow, sleet and hail outside.
I poked my finger through the knot hole in one of the planks of the swollen, frozen door.
My heart sank. I realised there was about 2m of snow banked up against the walls, the roof and the door.
I was trapped.
My chance of survival was next to none because the long drop was on higher ground than the rest of the lab, so everybody else would have been buried twice as deep.
I was going to die.
Crack! The weight of the roof became too much and my life flashed before my eyes.
My family, my friends and my job - all of the things I took for granted seemed to be the most important things in the world.
A small tear rolled down my cheek and left a chilling trail of ice behind it.
I closed my eyes and said one last goodbye to the world.
My last words and a piece of advice to the world is that you should treasure what you have, because in the blink of an eye, or in my case a trip to the loo, everything can be snatched from you.
Goodbye world, thank you for the time of my life.
• By Sol Wyatt, Year 9, St Peter's College
