It is getting colder and darker of a morning now and I sense that it is my primeval instinct to hibernate making it hard for me to open my eyes. I don’t want to stir, or get up and get dressed and go to the gym; I think about it but the overwhelming desire for sloth and comfort makes me pull the winter duvet up under my chin, and I don’t want Chris to draw back the curtains on another grey day (even though I’m enjoying painting a grey scene on my most recent canvas), but he does so anyway. It doesn’t help that “the men in orange”, the workers on the sea wall repairs, who are like the shoe-maker’s elves, have been working all through the night with machinery clanking, generators thrumming and lights blazing (or so it seems in the darkness of the early hours).
At last I succumb to the urging of Chris and I sit up and halfheartedly sip my cup of tepid, weak, watery grey tea (which is how I like it, except that it must be hot). We decide to go for a cycle ride to Cockwood, if it’s not raining – it’s a good way to get the circulation going and allay the onset of hibernation.
I don’t know what to wear – it is cold when you start out cycling but you soon warm up – so I put on my three-quarter length electric-orange sweat pants with the palm tree motiff and Malibu printed on the pocket (I note that I match “the men in orange” but I quite like that as they are our heroes); and I don a white t-shirt, which looks rather plain and utilitarian, so I throw on a multi-coloured floral top to cover the plainness and make me feel summery; a white cardigan and mauve and pink socks with a friesian cow pattern completes my ensemble. I think I look colourful but a bit odd; Chris says I look cute but I suspect that he doesn’t want me to waste any more time by changing.
The tide is out at Cockwood Harbour and the sun is hidden by layers of grey clouds; the mud smells a bit, and I can tell that Chris wants to go.
“Let’s just take a look at my boat,” I implore. He can’t say no. I love the idea of buying that boat but Chris says it isn’t worth twelve hundred pounds, even with a motor.
We agree that, if I manage to buy the Orkney long-liner at the right price, it would be a sweet little vessel for taking out into the estuary (not the open sea); and I could paint it like a narrow boat even though it is a round, bumble-bee like craft. It will be the prettiest boat in Cockwood Harbour – if only….
Seeing as the tide is out we walk under the railway bridge to the estuary side. Well, it may not be particularly attractive on a grey day, and those rocks covered with bladder wort seaweed (if that is what it is called) look big, looming and warty, however, it’s still nice to be out in the fresh air, regardless of the funny, fishy, seaweedy smell which is around this side too.
We take a new route on the way home – we’ve never been on this cycle path before – after all these years of living here. We wonder if it was made at the same time as the big cycle track – the gates look the same. Even under a cloudy sky, it is beautiful. Chris says the sun is trying to come through. The path runs along beside a tree-lined waterway cutting across from Dawlish Warren to Exeter Road, near the new Sainsbury’s supermaket (in case you want to find it). The sun shines behind the thinner clouds, bringing light if not warmth and we cross over the main road to take the more scenic country lane route on the last leg of our way home.
We arrive back invigorated and hungry; I am so glad that I got out of bed this morning. All the same, I don’t rule out hibernating when the clocks go back next weekend; and we’re looking forward to Australia in the new year, but until then, we must enjoy the grey – a bit like getting older…not that I have any grey…
Can humans hibernate? As a driver survives for TWO MONTHS trapped without food at -30c, this theory could transform medicine
Few can fully imagine the frozen nightmare that Swedish motorist Peter Skyllberg endured for two months, trapped and slowly dying inside his ice-bound car on a remote track after it became bogged down in snow drifts last December.
As his body temperature plummeted in the Scandinavian winter, he would have fallen ever more deeply into the grip of hypothermia.
The condition would have rendered his frozen brain disoriented and prone to hallucinations in the darkness of his snow-sealed vehicle.
Peter Skyllberg was trapped for two months inside his car. Miraculously, the freezing temperatures and scarce oxygen may actually have saved his life
Thoughts of rescue or escape would have faded as his consciousness slipped away.
And as Skyllberg, 44, lay shivering in his dark, dank tomb in temperatures as low as -30c, the air inside the car would have become ever staler as oxygen levels fell.
Curled up in his sleeping bag, his starving body would have started to shut down, muscle by muscle, organ by organ.
Miraculously, however, the freezing temperatures and scarce oxygen may actually have saved Skyllberg’s life.
The world watched in astonishment as he was pulled from his car on Friday, emaciated, in a torpid state and barely able to talk — but alive.
How did Swedish man survive in this frozen car at -30C for TWO MONTHS?SHARE THIS ARTICLE?
The story of Skyllberg’s escape from an icy death follows a series of astounding incidents where men, women and even children have survived conditions so cold that they should, by all accounts, have frozen to death.
But these cases have inspired doctors to investigate how such medical miracles occur, and their discoveries are opening up a freezing frontier of medicine.
For far from being deadly, extreme cold could offer a new way to save the lives of people who have suffered heart attacks and strokes. Some experts believe it may even provide a cure for certain cancers.
The circumstances of Skyllberg’s icy incarceration give us clues as to why he survived his ordeal.
When he was found on Friday near the northern town of Umea, just south of the Arctic Circle, he had been snowed into his car since at least December.
As Peter Skyllberg’s body temperature plummeted in the Scandinavian winter, he would have fallen ever more deeply into the grip of hypothermia
Although he had no food, he had been able to drink melted snow.
As Dr Ulf Segerberg, the chief medical officer at Norrland’s University Hospital in Umea, explains: ‘Humans can tolerate a month of starvation, so long as they have water to drink.’
But he was also buried deep in snow, and research indicates that conditions inside this freezing, fusty tomb may have set off a ‘hibernation’ response in his body.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2103961/Can-humans-hibernate-As-driver-survives-TWO-MONTHS-trapped-food–30c-theory-transform-medicine.html#ixzz3H4S9nc00
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