She is very hairy

A post about something completely different to hairiness

I’ve been very absent and I’m very sorry. It turns out it’s quite hard to write when your brain is reeling from heartbreak. I still find it hard but I have to start sooner or later. Don’t expect a masterpiece. I’m in France, in my French house (which you can rent!) where I fled to try to find some focus and sanity. It didn’t quite work out like that, but I am doing my best to recover both of those things, by swimming every day in water that is 12 degrees C but looks like this:

I started with 15 minutes in a wetsuit, and after two days ditched the wetsuit but kept two swimming caps against the brain freeze. Then I added earplugs as it turns out getting water in your ears freezes your brain as much as putting your face underwater. And now I’m in swimsuit with earplugs and only one swimming cap and I can stay in for 30 minutes and swim 800 metres and I swear — although scientific literature does not agree with me — that it is doing my stress fracture more good than five sessions of expensive laser therapy did. I finally feel that it is healing. I even dared hop on it the other day and did not howl with pain as I would have two months ago, but felt only the vaguest discomfort. I mean, I am howling with pain quite frequently but not because of my leg.

My friend Elliot says his mate wanted to pitch a story to the Guardian about swimming that didn’t start with “wild” or “cold water.” It would start with him getting the bus to the local leisure centre. As I’ve spent the last two months swimming in my local gym, I am sympathetic to that. But when there’s a gorgeous calm lake with a view of mountains 5K from my house, I’m going to submerge myself in it as often as I can and for as long as I can. This is the usual chronology of my daily swim:

1. Get in and yelp
2. Count to 50 and feel better
3. Do hairdresser breaststroke for a while then dare to put my face underwater
4. Yelp again
5. Keep putting my face underwater until my brain calms down
6. Swim properly
7. Watch the sunbeams in the water and wish I could stay there all day because it is the only place that neutralises the constant background hum of sadness, loss and grief

There are techniques afterwards too. Get your wet swimsuit off as quickly as possible, ideally flashing some unsuspecting French man in a van who is passing by. Get inside a towel or dry robe, get dry clothes on and then put a hot water bottle on your belly while you sort out your wet kit. I can feel my body temperature dropping within minutes, even if the sun is out. For some reason I feel coldest on my back, and then within half an hour my feet go numb. But it is all worth it. More techniques: drink hot liquid as quickly as possible to warm the core. If your leg allows, run a bit or jump about or if you really feel like it, do the can can, which is an excellent and efficient way to send blood to the extremities. That is required because actually cold water shock and heartbreak are similar, in that the body goes into fight or flight, and to fight or flee, the body diverts blood away from less important parts (fingers and toes) and to the central organs that need it.

What else is heartbreak similar to? Drug addiction. I spend too much time reading about the physiology of heartbreak and getting zero comfort from the fact that the brain reacts to it as it would if I were withdrawing from drugs. I have avoided drugs. I would also have liked to avoid heartbreak.

As Guy Winch says in this useful TED talk:

the same parts of the brain that get addicted govern feelings of love. So I am in withdrawal and I need a fix. And the only fix for wanting a fix is time and cold water, and the love of family and good friends, which I am extremely lucky to have (thank you to all my defenders and counsellors). If you have any other suggestions of how to fix a broken heart (and of good distracting films, books and anything else that is not Lac Montbel in the Aude), please share below.

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Reading corner

• I would not have thought that I would be captivated by a long read about floods in Belgium, but I’d read anything that Sirin Kale writes and this piece, on the life and death of Rosa Reichel, is excellent.

• Why are fish freaking out, spinning in circles and dropping dead? Dunno, but it’s usually because of us. (£, sorry.)

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Animal hero of the week

It could be Rosie, my friend Angie’s Italian greyhound, who is tiny and adorable and who sat on my lap under a blanket when Angie invited me to watch a crap film to stop me sitting at home alone. (Red Eye: bit boring except for Cillian’s hamming it up.) (Also, Luther Fallen Sun: avoid.) Or it could be Freya, who I sometimes borrow to go walking but these days it’s difficult because the processionary caterpillars are about to emerge, and they can be fatal for dogs. I’ve finally realised that all the white spooky nests in the trees up on the hill are not thousands of spiders but thousands of caterpillars. Much more comforting.

The processionary caterpillar is a dangerous pest for humans and animals. It has thousands of stinging hairs released in times of danger or stress. If the animal is trampled, crushed, blown by the wind… its hair breaks and stays there or flies away. Whether your animal is in direct contact with its hair by placing the nose on it or by ingesting the critter or in indirect contact by sniffing a place where it has lost its hair, the danger is the same. 

It is brownish in color with orange spots on the top and sides. She is very hairy.

And very very long.

The caterpillars are covered with hairs that cause irritation in humans and animals.

These very light and fragile hairs come off very easily as soon as the caterpillar is worried or excited and can be carried away by the wind.

When the hair breaks, from the first contact, the stinging and allergenic substance it contains is released and causes severe itching in animals, but also in humans.

They are the cause of more or less serious allergic reactions ranging from simple urtication to anaphylactic shock.

In animals cases of necrosis of the tongue are very frequent. Curious animals approach and make contact with their truffle or worse take them in their mouths. Ulceration appears very quickly, the animal drools, the lips and tongue swell and turn red. Then they begin to harden and turn white, before turning dark purple. The inflammation is violent and intense.

But here is the proper animal hero. I attended an event at the Lloyds Register Foundation, who kindly fund me to work for them as a consultant, and it was full of fascinating people including museum curators. I won’t identify them but one told me their most common legacy was prosthetic legs and another had far too many dress uniforms. There are only so many ordinary prosthetic legs a museum warehouse can handle.

A curator at the IWM though, told me that a colleague of his was writing a book about Frankenstein. Frankenstein the cat, who was named because he walked jerkily across the deck of a HMS Belfast, where he lived. Dunno, humans, you’re not all that at shipboard walking either. Here is Frankenstein in his hammock looking distraught:

Human sailors had to take turns using hammocks: Frankenstein had his own, made by the sail-maker, and not even the mice and rats dared shared it. His hammock was on the Mess deck and when he was not snoozing his job was to hunt for rats and mice. But actually his job was to cheer up sailors. Fake Frankenstein:

And here is HMS Kelvin’s ship’s kitten, apparently born in an officer’s wardrobe, looking out to sea in 1941. The IWM does not apparently have a record of the kitten’s name.

And finally another Belfast cat, this one deployed in the Far East in 1949. I like the aerodynamic ears:

I know. Not a vintage week for animal heroics. Really all I’m doing is giving you pictures of cats in hammocks and looking cute on ships. That’s the best I can do.

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