Watching the Last of Us is causing me some serious anxiety.

Today’s episode was almost entirely tame, but that doesn’t seem to matter vis-a-vis my cortisol levels. It was basically as tame as you can possibly imagine a zombie apocalypse TV show to be but I still had to watch it through my hands, fingers stuffed in ears and gritted teeth.

Just WAITING for a zombie to jump out.

It’s not good for my heart, this waiting for zombies to leap out. I need restful things to calm me down.

Knitting. Knitting calms me down.

Except, at knitting group, two police cars flash past.

I worry a zombie apocalypse is breaking out and I’m just sitting here knitting.

I call Joel.

All ok?

Yes. You ok?

Yes.

I need an alternative solution. I think of times in my life when I have been peak chilled out.

Hot tubs.

Ritualistic immersion in hot water is my spirit animal.

For example, there are natural hot springs in California, in the high alpine desert behind the Sierra rain shadow. The long valley behind the mountains (imaginatively called Long Valley) is actually a caldera, the sixth biggest in the world (I seem to recall, don’t fact-check me).

Occasionally people go to the hot spring tubs when they’re drunk. They get straight in without checking the little thermometers that sit near the source and are instantly scalded to death.

But mostly the tubs are benign and temperate. Locals go naked so the only people wearing bathing suits are out-of-towners. Everyone smokes weed, locals and out-of-towners alike, and it is pretty chilled out.

The tubs are a chilled out place.

Trying to recreate this in the Cotswolds, I sat in the tub outside my local gym today.

There are very few things you can do to affront me in a hot tub. I’m so at peace as to practically be Gandhi.

Two men get into the next one and start a full video call with their mum to show her how nice it was before they started their video call.

I’m not sure when it became ok to do this. I mean, broadcast your conversations or your music or your YouTube choice or your TikTok stream to everyone nearby, and I know that complaining about it makes me sound like a Grandma.

But I don’t care. Grandmas are cool and spewing your sounds indiscriminately is not.

A last resort. Trees, greenery. Being outside in N-A-T-U-R-E. That’ll do it.

Joel has a coffee, a real one. He’s been off the real stuff and on decaf since the new year so this injection of caffeine goes straight to his CPU and all his synapses fire swiftly in ludicrous succession.

He is wired, nervy, cracking bad dad jokes like his life depends on it.

“Look, there’s a birdhouse growing out of the side of that tree.”

“Look at that giant molehill next to all the little mole hills. It must be the mother mole hill.” (Actually, a pile of mud next to a bulldozer).

Contemplating a patchy tree. “I’d lichen it to a giraffe.”

“They are very larch, aren’t they?”

“Climbing trees takes me back to my roots.”

“What did the dog say at the arboretum?”

“What do computer programmers like about arboretums?”

“Why did the willow do a DNA test?”

I beg for mercy.

And then I notice. I haven’t thought about zombies, haven’t worried about a thing for hours, apart from how I can avoid hearing another terrible pun.

I kiss his face and ask if he’s done now please.

He says, yes, yes all done.

I was trying to come up with another one for the last twenty minutes.

Then it twigged.