The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard review - from winter floods to the origin of life

4. ledna 2018 18:30

Příroda

These fretful, questioning essays force readers to confront the disruption of our climate and ecologyIn the fourth and final essay of The Second Body, Daisy Hildyard describes winter floods inundating her house in Yorkshire. She didn't have any home insurance. "There had been two false alarms that year ... We'd been told that the water would come into our house at 4.2 metres, but when the levels got to 4.3 in early December, we were still dry." She and her husband were in receipt of automated telephone calls whenever the rain started to fall - a computerised female voice would predict the height the river might reach. "When it rains she rings up all the time," she explains; "you stop picking up to her." They went away with their young daughter for a few days over the Christmas holidays, and when they came back, the river was lapping near their ceilings. "Before we went away we moved all our things a few inches off the ground, emptied the bottom drawers, and piled everything on to the second shelf up. This was one of the most pointless things I have ever done."After the flood receded, neighbours and strangers gave up their Christmas holiday time to help her hose out sediment and clean up. "I became a designated Victim with an assigned caseworker and my own reference number at the food bank." During the flood her father had swum out to the house to gather paperwork; as she laid out the papers to dry, passers-by took pictures of her with their phones. A reporter hoping to interview her feigned pity, and on the television she saw aerial footage of her street. "The flood looked very small. It wasn't like that on the ground where it was everywhere." She found catharsis in throwing away many of her possessions - a catharsis that expressed itself physically: "The sense of relief was located in my spine, it felt as if my vertebrae were spacing themselves further out, as if my body was growing longer and more loose." Continue reading...
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