Death perception

On perceiving beauty, moment to moment, and doing what we must to survive.

Remember my summer blend? This is winter’s answer.

—

“It’s kind of beautiful, you know.”

“Yeah.”

Joel and I are gazing out through a rain-glazed windscreen at unmoving cars in front of us.

I look at him. “The light on the water droplets, I mean.”

“Yeah, I know. The red brake lights.”

This is one of my favourite things about Joel. He knows what I mean even when I say almost nothing.

“Ow!” Sudden noise from the backseat, and giggles.

“Meow!”

“Can you guys calm down please?” That’s Joel, not me. I’m way less patient and polite.

“She’s trying to kiss and lick me!”

“She’s just trying to wind you up.”

Another voice, from the very back:

“When do we get on the train?”

And a fourth:

“I need a sick bag.”

Then back to the first two:

“I need a wee.”

“Dad, how much longer ’til we actually get there?”¹

—

You may have noticed I didn’t post last week. Or not, whatever. I’m realistic about the peripherality of this newsletter to your life.

I’ve been driving to and from the mountains in France with Joel and our children (four in total). In between that, some skiing.

For the occasion, I decided to delete the Substack app from my phone and just … take a lil break.

Of course, I didn’t take a break. I wanted to, I tried to, but I probably looked at my phone more in the last week than in all the previous weeks of 2024 put together. This is because I replaced Substack with a short but aggressive stint on Instagram. Now I’m home and have deleted the ’gram and reinstated Substack.

All about balance.

Anyway, at the beginning of the week it bothered me a bit that I wasn’t writing anything.

On a chairlift, I told Joel I felt guilty for not thinking about my book, for feeling like I had nothing to write.

“You need a break from thinking about it. That’s when things fall into place.”

“But I’m not even thinking about it a little bit!” I said.

He nodded. “Exactly. You have to take a break from thinking, even — especially — about the things you enjoy.”

I pondered this. The chair vaulted ridges. Underneath us, France was the bones of mountains, dusted in snow. Was I taking a break, not just from writing and work, but from thinking at all?

A week skiing is the best possible way to take a break from thinking. Like climbing, you can’t think about anything else when you’re doing it.

Why is that? I asked Joel.

He considered. “It’s not like walking, or hiking. Remember when we went to Wales and hiked for a week?”

“Yeah. I came back and wrote not one but two newsletters.”

He nodded again. “Exactly. That’s because there’s loads of time to think when you’re hiking. Not when you’re skiing.”

“That’s true, I don’t think at all when I ski.”

He lifted the restraining bar. “Skiing isn’t about thinking. It’s about staying alive.”

—

I thought about this later (off the slopes, of course). While it seems a touch grandiose — particularly in the context of resort skiing — there is something in it.

When you are doing something in which an error, a miscalculation, a lapse of attention could kill you, your mind tends not to wander. When you could pick your turn wrong and hit rocks, trees or spin over a cliff, you think about nothing else. You pay attention to what you’re doing from moment to moment. You could, at best, do yourself some serious damage; at worst, you’re dead. Death is a real and constant possibility, that suggests itself over and over in the mind, when you confront the sheer scale of the mountains.

This is how it feels when you must survive. You are calm, you do what you have to do, from moment to moment.

The difference is, in the moments of greatest horror, the mind detaches itself.

In contrast, when I ski, I fully inhabit my body and am joyful, even as I contemplate the moment-to-moment decisions needed to survive. I don’t feel gripped, thinking to myself pay attention, don’t fuck this up, you might die if you blow out at 65 mph. I feel calm, zen, completely self-obliterated. I don’t think about anything when I’m skiing apart from how happy I am to be skiing. It’s the closest I come to perfect existential bliss.

At the moment when the danger is greatest, I’m least aware of how fast I’m moving and how high the stakes are. I inhabit myself fully.

But other survival situations require complete disembodiment.

—

I read Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmuss recently. Despite the hype — it was mediocre at best — two lines stood out for me:

That had to be a special brand of bravery, for a child to endure the worst, and despite every law in the universe and all evidence to the contrary, decide the next day might be better.

And this one:

These days he was an obstetrician. He already knew how tough women could be.

In the French Alps, the rocks have been scoured for hundreds of millions of years. What remains are the strongest bits of the mountains.

The shapes they make are beautiful, even after the violence of wind and snow.

—

Another interruption from the backseat. They’re playing Minecraft (I know, I know, my principles, the window, etc.)

Minecraft is, from what I can gather, a survival game. I listen to them for a little while.

“Ok, make a bomb squad. Blow up the dam and start again.”

“No, gather those cows. Then I get milk, diamonds and a bucket of water.”

“Grab the controls.”

—

Death perception.

That was how I pronounced “depth perception” as a kid. I didn’t realise what it was until I was an adult.

I still haven’t acquired it. I have no depth perception. Joel talks about it often. Usually right after I’ve whacked my head into yet another open car door/ kitchen cabinet/ tree branch.

It’s so bad that, if he knows my trajectory will take me past a place that’s proven hazardous before, he will warn me.

“Careful babe, the garage door/ car / wardrobe is open.”

“Mind your head when you stand up.”

“Careful of your head.”

“Watch your head!”

The only place, he says, where my depth perception appears to function normally — rather, acutely well — is when I’m on skis.

We tried to figure out why this might be. On skis, I make split-second assessments of multiple moving variables (usually: other slower-moving people). I map slope, terrain, tree placement and snow quality with rapid-fire precision. I don’t crash into things when I ski.

I go very, very fast and I still don’t crash into things.

I’ve tried (failed) to write before about a small part of what skiing means to me.

I say failed because then it was all wrapped up in complicated feelings about a boy. That’s nonsense. I don’t love skiing because of any boy.

I love skiing because it sets me free. Skiing was the first time I was ever out of the house as a kid, away from my family for extended hours, before I was school age. Skiing was my window into the bigger world, my first perceived hint of greater depths out there.

No wonder my depth perception on skis is on point.

Skiing is like flying, I’ve said it before. When I ski, I ski with wings. Sometimes, on a lofty stretch of mountain, I spread my fingers like feathers at the tips of a kite’s wing.

At 3,500m above sea level, cruising with pinions flexed, I perceive, as from a great distance above, my own death. I float high, detached from the chaos beneath.

This is a response to great trauma too. You perceive it from above, as from a great height, with only a calm measured consideration of how to survive moment to moment.

I remember thinking like this as a very small child. I remember thinking that I could get my father arrested and he would go to prison. I remember thinking that I would have nowhere to live. I would lose my home and who knows what would happen to me and my sister. Maybe I would lose her too.

I considered the options with cool detachment. Survival was at stake.

—

Underneath the chairlift, the snow stands out in creamy ridges, exactly like sand in a retreating tide.

It’s amazing it can still look so much like water, even in its solid form: the same way sand can look like waves.

It’s wind, made visible: the imprint on whatever is left behind, by whatever has gone before.

Why is my depth perception on skis so good? It’s because my life depends on it. My life doesn’t depend on not banging into the kitchen cabinets.

Maybe that’s always the case though. Our lives always depend on it, and death is a constant shadow. We are always moving pretty fast, and the stakes? Super high.

Taking the time to notice a moment is all we have.

—

The next day, I’m in a long line of women waiting for the toilet. There is no corresponding line of men; of course there isn’t. Everyone knows men take less time to piss than women — closing cubicle door, disrobing and sitting down takes more time than simply whipping your dick out and pissing at a wall. Male and female toilets occupy the same floor space but in that floor space you can pack two urinals for every single stall. Eight men can piss for every four women.

Hence: the line.

It never fails to enrage me. We have been to the fucking moon but we can’t work out how to design equitable toiletry for men and women?²

It happened again at a lodge on the slopes where we stopped for lunch. There was a men’s toilet and a women’s toilet. The line for the women’s went out the door and down the stairs. Meanwhile, Joel bounced in and out of the loo in the time it took me to advance a single step.

“This is really unfair,” he pointed out. Thank you, Captain Obvious, I thought, I love you.

“How many stalls are in the women’s?” He went on.

“Four.”

“You know there are six in the men’s? Two stalls and four urinals.”

“Are you shitting me?” An unfortunate turn of phrase for the occasion.

“No. I just counted.”

“Right. That’s fucked. I’m going to say something.”

I grabbed an officious looking chap I’d seen bustling around in tight jeans and a sneer.

“Excuse me, are you the manager?”

He examined me as he might something stuck to his shoe. “Yes.”

“Look at this line of women, please. Can you explain to me why you have four toilets for women to pee in and six for men?”

“Um, no-ooo, it’s not true. Actually we only have two for men.”

I resisted the urge to poke him in the eye and call him a shit head.

Joel pounced. “You’re wrong. There are six toilets in the men’s. I’ll show you.”

He led the man-ager up the stairs past the silent line of women into the (sparsely-inhabited) men’s toilet.

The manager pointed triumphantly at the two stalls.

“There, one, two!”

Joel turned him around and pointed at the urinals.

“… three, four, five, six.”

The manager looked mulish. “Those … are not toilets.”

Joel gaped. “There’s people peeing in them!”

“Yes, but they are not toilets.”

“What the hell are they then? Sinks? Ice cream dispensers? You better stop all those guys peeing in them.”

Back downstairs the manager had to contend with me again.

“Now, please explain to this whole line of women why they have to wait for four toilets when the men have six. Frankly, I think you should apologise.”

Well, spoiler: he did not apologise. And I am probably no longer welcome to eat my lunch slopeside at Chinal Donat chalet in Orelle.³

But that’s ok. I’m pretty sure it’s actually illegal to offer women fewer toilets than men under EU legislation.

Call me a Karen if you want, I give zero fucks. I will die on the hill of equitable toiletry for men and women.

I will lodge a formal complaint with the fucking European Commission representative working on gender equality.

I will scream into an endless void of unfairness.

—

This really was a holiday that showcased a range of male entitlement. I’m sorry to all my male readers, I know hashtag notallmen — I am in love with a man so I really do know this — but it did seem to be a theme of the trip.

Case in point: there was some kind of convention of adolescent Scandinavian males happening in Val Thorens while we were there. Is it a Norwegian university ski trip? Is it some kind of Swedish youth political group? Who can say. Not I, because I don’t speak Norwegian (I’m pretty sure it was Norwegian).

Now, I’ve never had a bad word to say about Scandis before this trip, but let me tell you without exaggeration that the mountains were overrun with hordes of screaming, puking, pissing-in-the-elevators, tall blonde assholes.

Unfortunately, there were some staying in the room next to us, who felt entitled to throw ragers until 1am. These were full-on ragers, with speakers thumping music through the walls, chant-singing à la Chelsea supporters at Stamford Bridge and extravagant table-banging.

Some time past midnight, all four kids awake, I had enough and knocked on their door. Knocked doesn’t really cover it. Open hand tensed hard as I could. My forearm throbbed with the impact but I was so angry I didn’t even feel it.

A terrified looking young woman cracked open the door, with big eyes.

“Are you kidding me with this? I’ve got four children trying to sleep next door.”

“Oh sorry, sorry….”

The next night, same thing. But a guy at the door: older than me, short, balding, belligerent.

He cut me off.

“Look, you’re the one who chose to stay in a party hotel with your children.”

I gaped at him. “A party hotel? You don’t get to decide it’s a party hotel because you want to have a party. This is a family hotel. There’s a kids’ play area downstairs. There’s a ‘children’s corner’. You know what there’s not? A drunk middle-aged asshole corner.”

The next morning, 7am getting four tired kids ready for ski lessons, I sent my sister a picture of the mountains.

“It’s so early.” She yawn-emoji-ed back to me.

“Ski time!”

“I still can’t believe you take holidays where you have to set alarms.”

She had a point. I turned red-eyed to Joel.

“Tell the kids they can go be as loud as they want in the hallway right now. Let’s unleash the children on them.”

You think that’s noise motherfucker, watch this.

—

After our run-in with the protector of men’s rights to extra toilets at Chinal Donat, we chose a different hut to stop at for lunch the next day.

The food looked great. There was a vat of onion gravy and I asked for extra.

The chef:

“You haven’t even tried it yet, how do you know it’s good?!”

“Because we’re in France.”

The next day we went back and a girl was serving.

The chef watched the girl ladle an extra dollop of sauce on my plate.

“Doucement,” he scolded her … softly.

She explained I’d asked for more and waved the ladle in my direction. He looked up and I waved. Hiiiii, me again.

He grinned, rolled his eyes and waved me on.

After lunch, I went to their toilets. There was no queue.

This is why:

—

In the gondola later, I’m listening to three people chat and trying to figure out what language they’re speaking. It sounds like Russian but in the same lukewarm way that Portuguese kind of sounds like Russian.

“What language are you guys speaking?”

“Russian.”

Nailed it, I think to myself.

We chatted to them on the way up. Two of them came from Moscow and said they had to transit through Istanbul to get here to the mountains.

The third guy works in London for a “hedge fund” (his words, not mine). The two from Moscow told me they used to work for big international banks and consulting firms in Moscow — but now, post-Ukraine, they work for the Russian equivalents.

Needs must, I thought.

They asked if I’d ever been to Moscow and I said yes and told them all about the time in 2007 when a policeman took my passport and tried to blackmail me for $160 to get it back.

They looked at each other.

“Wow, you were lucky to get it back. The police, they were so desperate then. But that was a long time ago. It wouldn’t happen now.”

“Why not?”

“Now it’s much more under control. They wouldn’t dare.”

The police — and all the Russian security services — are probably much better paid now, I thought to myself.

We talked more about my Trans-Siberian trip. When I mentioned how much I liked Irkutsk on the edge of Siberia, they gaped like it was the moon.

“Only foreigners do crazy shit like this, sit on a train for four days. We Russians, we don’t do that. Why do that if you don’t need to?”

—

Back at the hotel, there’s one of those coffee pod machine things. I’m an elder millennial and unfamiliar with this kind of contraption. As I grappled with it, the lid fell in to the water tank.

Fuck.

I stared at it for a moment. How hot is that water? There’s no way to tell. Maybe it’s cool. Or maybe it’s about to melt that plastic lid.

I’ll just grab it.

As soon as I reach towards it, the thing springs to life. Like a blender or a garbage disposal, when you dislodge a chicken bone.

—

Later that evening, Joel is loading the car. As soon as we set off, the boys in the backseat try to outdo each other’s effluence.

“Fart sauna!”

“Fart fondue.”

“It’s because of all that hot garlic cheese.”

“It smells really eggy.”

“I haven’t had eggs today.”

“You’ve just admitted it was you.”

Joel and I opened the window and soldiered on.

—

On the drive back, we stopped at a rest area. There was, of course, an enormous line for the women’s toilets. It was so long that it snaked out the door of the loo, into the concourse of the rest stop, past the Paul boulangerie and ended just inside the sliding doors at the entrance. It was 100 women deep. Just looking at it, I knew it would be a half-hour wait, at least.

We had a train to catch.

I told Joel to take all the kids into the men’s, which was clear, and stepped back outside.

Thirty seconds later, I am squatting for a covert piss in the wooded area behind this rest stop, near Reims. Champagne country, but I’ve never felt less champagne in my life.

I finished in record time and returned inside.

The queue hadn’t moved. For a moment, I was elated and almost urged the other women to follow suit. Vive la revolution!

But then a voice of caution in my head. I anticipate robust French disapproval.

Often, there’s no one so invested to keep women in line as other women.

—

On the motorway, late, somewhere in west London in the driving rain. All four kids are asleep in the backseat but I’m awake in solidarity with Joel, who is still driving. Not far to go now.

We’re in the middle lane, and a semi-trailer is sweeping in — fast — from a slip road. The car on the inside lane sees the truck merging towards it but doesn’t see us. We are right next to it, in its blind spot.

In an instant, I see the merging truck, the car sliding into our lane, red lights in the driving rain— and scream.

Then the moment is over and Joel has us in the next lane, out of the way of the car, the semi, the almost-collision at 70mph.

—

The morning after we arrive home, the river is up and thrusting aggressively through the garden. I gather it’s been raining a lot while we’ve been gone.

Winter is on the turn to spring.

This garden is not perfect, far from it. I don’t believe in “landscaping” or decorative borders or lawns. I mostly let things grow where bounty strikes, with neither rhyme nor reason, for the most part.

I do the rounds. The snowdrops are past their best now and on a drooping downturn. I rip out nettles and a particularly aggressive bramble, eight inches of root welded to the earth like an iron spike. The hellebore are blooming, alongside clustered yellow globules of Oregon grape. Periwinkle is spreading unchecked along the garden wall. Wood avens and columbine pop up everywhere, to my delight.

I haven’t seen a crocus yet but the daffodils are threatening to split into bloom.

Questions abound that the spring may answer. Last autumn I dug up an ash sapling that was coming up in the wrong spot, too close to the house. I accidentally broke off a chunk of the root ball in transplanting and worried all winter I’d killed it.

But he’s pulled through the winter, still here and now burgeoning with those dark velvet beads of leaves-to-be so peculiar to ash trees.

Even the wisteria that I carted from London carries wispy buds. So far, it’s refused to bloom out here in Oxfordshire — stubbornly pining for Deliveroo, museums and all night buses — but fingers crossed, this might be her year.

My son comes out, to help throw sticks in the river.

Where are all my crocuses (croci)? Pulling up some ivy that’s gone too far this time, I spot familiar candy-striped green and white crocus shoots. They’ve been nibbled to a nubbin, to nothing.

We spy a nest in our hedge. It’s quite small. My son says with authority that it probably belongs to a robin.

I ask if he knows what colour the robin’s eggs are and he says no. I tell him they’re bright blue, the colour of the sky.

He thinks about this for a long moment. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why does a robin have a red chest but blue eggs?”

I have no more answers. Sometimes things just … don’t make sense, or line up as we expect. Newsletters too.

All we have are the moments, to moments.

1. The answer, at the time this question was asked, was a sobering 9 hours and 45 minutes.

2. For more on inequitable toiletry, please refer to the incomparable Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men and self-proclaimed Lobbyist for Big Vagina, a lobby to which I humbly submit myself as lifelong intern and apprentice.

3. That’s ok though because the food is mediocre and over-priced.