The Awkward Girl's Guide to Deep Sea Submersibles

.... and those who sail in them

Things I Have Learned from Obsessively Following the Story of the Lost Titanic Submersible This Week:

The Titanic is one of a handful of borderline-obsessive interests I’ve had over the years. (See also: The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann; What Happened to MH370.) It’s basically my Roman Empire. If I didn’t have the ability to absorb huge amounts of information while only remembering around 15% of it, I’d probably have been invited onto Mastermind by now…)

To be fair, my Titanic obsession actually started off as more of a Leonardo Dicaprio obsession (Yes, I’m one of Those People who saw the movie approximately 25 times, SO?), but it quickly widened into a fascination with all things Titanic, so the case of the missing Titan submersible was always going to grab my interest, and refuse to let it go. Here are a few things I learned from being pretty much glued to the internet all week, reading increasingly weird theories about what might have happened:

1. If you run out of water, it is NOT a good idea to drink your own, or anyone else’s urine, despite what you might have seen on TV. Apparently this will just dehydrate you faster, so if you needed any more reasons not to drink urine, folks, that’s a pretty good one. Thank me later.

2. Bathophobia is the fear of depths (and not, as you might imagine, the fear of baths.) According to this website, “People with bathophobia experience anxiety or panic when near or thinking about a depth, despite knowing that they are safe from falling or being consumed by it.” I suspect I might be bathophobic; and if I wasn’t before, I sure am now.

3. Submechanophobia is the fear of submerged objects. I think I have this too.

4. That feeling you get when you’re reading or watching something in which someone is trapped in a confined space, or is deep underwater, doesn’t seem to have a specific name (Unless it’s just second-hand claustrophobia, obviously…), but it’s probably similar to ‘email apnea’, which is when you forget to breathe while reading an email, or otherwise concentrating. (So yes, all of those pointless work emails you get really could kill you, in other words.) I’ve spent a lot of this week feeling like I couldn’t breathe while watching coverage of this case, so I’m coining the name ‘news apnea’ to cover it — feel free to use it at will.

5. James Cameron (Director of Titanic) was on a dive to the Titanic wreck when 9/11 happened, which meant he emerged from the site of one tragedy right into the arms of another, so to speak.

6. If you comment on a news story on Twitter, you should be prepared to be interrogated about why you haven’t commented publicly about all of these other news stories: is it because you don’t care about poor people, or is it just that you’re an idiot?

7. I am far too much of a coward to comment about anything on Twitter. I mean, this was also the week someone posted a photo of her parents’ dog’s hilariously bad haircut, and some guy in the comments lost his mind over it and started accusing the parents of neglecting their dog, so I’m convinced there’s pretty much nothing you can say there now that won’t instantly make you someone’s enemy.

8. (He’s deleted his comments now. I’d like to think he thought better of them, but…)

9. Some people really, really hate billionaires.

10. Some other people feel strongly that it’s only possible to care about or be interested in one thing at a time, so if you feel sorry for the billionaires, say, it must mean you don’t give a shit about the Greek migrant tragedy. Imagine what it must be like going through life only able to think about one thing at a time, though? How do they function?

11. The two groups of people referred to in points 7 and 8 are literally the same group of people. I bet the dog guy’s in there somewhere, too.

12. Not much has been learnt from the sinking of the Titanic; a tragedy in which the arrogance of its makers led them to believe that safety measures would basically be a waste of money, so they didn’t bother to add them.

13. There is no amount of money you could pay me to get into a submersible — not even to go to the bottom of a swimming pool, let alone the bottom of the ocean.

14. IT WAS BOLTED CLOSED FROM THE OUTSIDE. FROM THE OUTSIDE.

15. I actually feel like I can’t breathe right now.

16. The competitive lack of empathy from the people who consider themselves to be the “good guys” (i.e. the ones who cared more about the migrant ship than you), and who demonstrate this by gloating over the suffering of “rich people” is another thing that makes me feel like I can’t breathe.

17. It’s probably time for me to remove the Twitter app from my phone again for a bit.

18. Despite all of the above, the capacity of humans to hope for a happy ending — and try desperately to achieve one — even when it seems obvious that all hope is in vain, is still absolutely endless. And I think that’s a good thing.

So it’s been a depressing week all round, really, and it’s been difficult to breathe through a lot of it. I’ve seen a lot of people claim not to understand why there’s been so much interest in this story, though, which puzzles me, because I’m not sure if these people genuinely lack the imagination to see why such an unusual, nightmarish scenario being played out in real-time would be so fascinating to some of us, or if they’re just saying it to prove that they’re better than us, because they allegedly only ever think about v. serious, “worthy” issues, and are above caring about rich people and their self-made problems. So a bit like when people pretend not to have heard of the Kardashians or Love Island, say, to make themselves seem more high-brow than those who have.

Either way, though, I think the reason (some) people fixate on stories like this one (The Chilean miners, and the boys trapped in the cave in Thailand being other examples that spring to mind…), is partly that they’re so unusual, but also because, as we’re hearing about them in “real time”, we get to hope that we’re about to collectively witness a ‘miracle’ of sorts — one of those rare moments when humans are able to work together to change an ending that seems inevitable, and make it a happy one instead. The story is still being written, and, while it is, we have hope.

(Until, of course, we don’t, which sadly seems to be the case here.)

Photo by Christian Holzinger on Unsplash

It seems weird and inappropriate to segue from death and suffering to “here’s what I’ve been reading, watching, trying and buying this week”, but that is, after all, what these Friday newsletters are about, so here we go…

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READING

The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah

I finished The Keeper of Stories (Which really was excellent: lots of stories-within-stories, and a writing style that kept making me stop to think, “Hey, I should just give up with the writing now: there’s no way I could ever be this good…”), and moved on to The Four Winds.

This was one of a small pile of bestsellers my husband bought last year, thinking it would be a good idea for me to read them all in the name of “research”. That was just fine by me, obviously, but I have to admit, I’d put The Four Winds towards the bottom of the pile, because, for some reason, it just didn’t appeal to me.

Then I opened it up and was instantly hooked. I mean, here are the opening lines:

“Elsa Wolcott had spent years in enforced solitude, reading fictional adventures and imagining other lives. In her lonely bedroom, surrounded by the novels that had become her friends, she sometimes dared to dream of an adventure of her own, but not often.”

I felt that in my soul, people. In my soul.

The story follows Elsa and her family through the drought and depression of 1930s Texas. The Dust Bowl is something I’m ashamed to admit I know nothing about, but I’m finding it fascinating reading about it, and the lives of these fictional characters who are trying to survive it. So another definite recommendation from me, even though I’m still only about a quarter of the way through it.

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WATCHING

Black Mirror Season 6

It’s weird, because I never actively want to sit down and watch Black Mirror, but, when I do, I don’t want to stop.

So far, we’ve only seen the first episode, Joan is Awful, in which Annie Murphy (Of Schitt’s Creek fame) realizes her life is being serialized in real time, as part of a new AI-generated show for a streaming platform. Which is actually not that hard to imagine happening, really, and at least one reason to be grateful for the fact that I live such a boring life.

If you read my post on how AI is potentially going to force me to shutter my blog this year, you’ll already know that this is a subject that’s close to my heart right now, and this episode also reminded me of when I was a kid, and I used to worry that people could secretly hear my thoughts — like, I was speaking them all out loud without realizing it or something — but had all entered into some kind of agreement not to let on. So this episode literally played into some of my deepest fears, and don’t you just love it when that happens?

Now we just need giant crustaceans take over the world, and I think that’ll be all of my major phobias covered this week.

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TRYING

I gave up on the expensive Colgate toothpaste, probably without giving it a proper go, if I’m honest. But it was really hurting my teeth, while appearing not to make even the slightest difference to the colour, so I’ve left it to Terry, and will report back on his findings in a few weeks. I hope.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying this on my straw-like hair:

The verdict? I mean, I think the word “miracles” is doing some very heavy lifting here, but I will acknowledge that this stuff does actually make my hair feel softer. I apply it at night, concentrating on both the ends, and also the annoying flyaways on the top of my head that make me permanently look like I’ve been touching a Van de Graaf generator, then I pile it all up on top of my head and go to sleep.

In the morning, as I said, the hair is definitely softer than it would have been without the lotion, and it smells nice, too, which is an added bonus. Surprisingly, it hasn’t made it feel greasy, either, which I’d expected it to, as my hair loves to look greasy. I guess it’s maybe just so dry at the moment that it’s drinking the stuff up? I have no idea. But I like it enough to keep on using it (when I remember), because “soft” and “smells nice” is good enough for me.

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BUYING

I haven’t bought anything particularly interesting this week (Unless you consider new joggers for Max “interesting” anyway), but I did spend over an hour in an online queue to register for the opportunity to queue again for Taylor Swift tickets I can’t afford, and won’t be fast enough to get, anyway.

Honestly, this is all so stressful. When I saw that international dates had been announced, I actually found myself hoping there wouldn’t be any Scottish ones, because then I wouldn’t get to see Taylor, sure, but I also wouldn’t have to fight for tickets, or spend money I can’t afford on them, and that would be better for me, surely?

But, nope: two Edinburgh dates. GOD DAMN IT.

I could obviously just have ignored it. I could have closed down my laptop and switched off my phone. But then I thought about how terrible I would feel this time next year, when every single person I know is talking non-stop about how they’re going to see Taylor tonight (Which they’ll definitely do, even if they don’t particularly like her, just like they all went to see Beyonce and Harry Styles last month, despite having never mentioned either of them in their lives before…), and that’s how I came to find myself sitting in that online queue, and wondering if I should ask Terry to join it, too.

Anyway, it’s done. I’ve pre-registered to be notified when the tickets go on sale, which apparently doesn’t guarantee that I’ll be sent a link to buy one, so I think I’ve basically just registered to be pre-stressed about it?

What if I don’t get the link?

What if I DO get the link, but the tickets are all crazy expensive?

What if I get the link and the tickets are only moderately expensive, but something happens that means I can’t be online at the time, so I miss out?

What if I’m just too slow?

Why does getting tickets to a concert have to feel so much like The Hunger Games?

And, I mean, whatever happens, it’s almost a certainty that I won’t be seeing Taylor Swift next summer. And I hate that for me.

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