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Zina Saro-Wiwa

I think they call it pica, when you have cravings for food with absolutely no nutritional content. My craving for around 19 of my 25 years has been for ice. I don’t know of anyone who shares the same obsession with it as I do.

You’d be amazed how many people think it’s sexual. It really isn’t but I have wondered why I like eating it so much. I have spoken to my doctor and dentists about this habit and they all say the same thing that if I do it in moderation, there’s nothing wrong with it and that there’s nothing wrong with me and no, I’m not pregnant.I pop cubes only once every 2 or 3 days on average, depending on where I am and access to ice-making facilities.

Once the thought of ice enters my head I cannot remove it until I have had some. Anything can trigger it off from Arctic footage on television to wandering past the fish mongers. When I eat it I feel invigorated and refreshed.

I began to seize upon the shavings that look like snow in the freezer walls for my snow hit. The eternal scraping would make my mother’s blood curdle and she would tell me horror stories about the nature of my freezer harvest, saying I was "eating her frozen sneeze." I duly ignored her as I assumed she was scare-mongering. However, in order not to annoy her, my attention drifted to ice cubes and thus a new passion was born.

Eating ice doesn’t hurt if you do it right. You just have to roll the ice on your tongue to stop it adhering itself painfully to the inside wall of your mouth, then crunching it very quickly indeed in the least sensitive part of your teeth. The bulk of the pleasure is to be had when, crushed and subdued, the ice makes its solemn way down your throat.

To be honest, enjoying an ice cube in the privacy of one’s own home is really the best thing. That way you won’t get caught with an ice lump in your mouth at cocktail dos, neither will you be treated like a circus freak and have pint glasses plonked in front of you that are filled to the brim with terrifyingly large ice cubes by people who want to ‘watch you at it’. At home I can just crunch my small, perfectly-formed cubes in my armchair, then sit back sombre but content and enjoy that slight buzz in my head that I get - unobserved and unjudged.