Letters, Sam Warburton, Fashion Nonsense, Pierced Ears

                                           Letters

Sylvia Crookes went for a smear and as the doctor peered up her with his flashlight, he remarked: “I see you are a teacher.” Sylvia was astounded. “How can you tell?” she asked, wondering at the gynaecological effect that her profession was having. “I read it in your notes,” he replied.

(Sylvia Crookes, The Times, 2019)


RUGBY

Sam Warburton was the captain of the Welsh rugby team and the British Lions.

Sam Warburton’s autobiography opens in a hotel room in Wellington, New Zealand, in the early hours where he is in the midst of the 2017 British Lions Tour that will go down in history for a drawn series against the All Blacks.

… “It should be the highlight of my career,” he notes. “It feels like anything but.”

'Anxiety', Head of a Girl, 

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)

Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

His body aches all over with the damage of more than 20 significant injuries but it is the pressure piled almost intolerably upon himself to win, to perform, that has brought a sleepless night of anxiety and turmoil. It is startling to think of this big man alone at 2am on the night before one of the most prestigious games of his life fighting back tears, craving escape – and calling his mum.

“I’ve had enough,” Warburton tells her. He talks of packing his bags, fleeing to the airport. “I’ll be in the air before they realise I’ve gone,” he says. She calmly has to talk him down, as if from a ledge.

… Few sportsmen I have met are more grounded or appreciative of their blessings but, in retirement, Warburton speaks candidly and compellingly about what it takes to endure in the crucible of elite sport when the pressure can feel suffocating.

He reveals how nerves would attack him on the day of a game – evening matches were always the worst – with a voice in his head almost pleading for an excuse to withdraw.

“Give me food poisoning so I can’t play. Let me turn my ankle on the stairs so I can’t play.”

… As he talks, it is also easy to see why Warburton is widely considered to be one of the most decent men in sport. He has scurried round tidying his house for visitors. He dotes on his dog, loves to be surrounded by family and, a year on from retirement relishes his days as a stay-at-home dad to a three-year-old daughter Anna. There was a period when he was so beaten up with injuries that he struggled to join her on the trampoline in the garden…

(Matt Dickinson, The Times, 2019)


… Wilkinson has always suffered with anxiety, “but when I was younger it was 50-50, half of me was loving the game, half was worrying about what would happen if it went wrong. And as I got older that ratio became 70-30, then 85-15, and it left so little space for joy.”

… “I spent my career surviving the pressure I put on myself,” Wilkinson says. “When you get to the end you look back and you say ‘what did I do with my career?’ I survived it. Well if you had told that to me when I was 20 I would have smacked myself.”

… “Look,” he explains, “there’s guys who made the World Cup squad and never got picked who are as happy as anything, and there are some guys that played in the final and won it who are utterly miserable.” Wilkinson knows. He was one of them himself. “I lived a huge amount of my career thinking I was going to achieve joy through suffering,” he says, “but all I did was create a habit of suffering. I lived for those beautiful moments of being in the zone during the games, and I told myself they were the result of the ridiculous suffering I went through and the sacrifices I made. So I told myself I had to suffer more, because that was the way I was going to get back in the zone.”

In 2003 “my anxiety was at a peak, and then it paid off, we won the World Cup, so I was like: ‘Bring on the joy!’” It never came.

… Wilkinson does not enjoy revisiting those memories, like the time he found himself sinking to the bottom of a swimming pool and screaming to himself underwater, or the moments he spent shivering in a toilet cubicle in the minutes before kick-off, scared stiff and desperate for someone to talk to.

… “the guys I was playing with when I started came from the amateur era, and they definitely had a better sense of balance because they had the grounding of working in an office one day and playing rugby the next,” he says.

… He feels as if he spent years trying to fight his depression with “another Six Nations Championship, or some more caps, or titles, or points. ‘Surely,’ I told myself, ‘that will keep you off my back?’ It doesn’t. It’s never enough.”

(Andy Bull, The Guardian, 2019)

Two ‘greats’ of the game for whom joy and happiness became subservient to pressure, anxiety and depression. A fitting reminder that human endeavour and achievement can come at a great cost.

Pre-Distressed Fashion

Scarecrow,

unknown artist

Photo Credit: American Museum & Gardens [CC BY-NC]

Wear a pair of purposely ripped jeans and someone older than you – stranger or family member, colleague or teacher – will pipe up with a comment along the lines of:

“You’ve got a hole in those jeans!” or “Did you pay extra for the rips?” Pre–distressed clothing brings out the look-at-the-young-aren’t-they-ridiculous instinct in the best of us.

So I can only imagine the censure that anyone daring/stupid (delete as applicable) enough to wear a pair of Gucci’s new spring/summer trainers would face when they step out. These are shoes that cost £615, look filthy and come in a range of stained colours with scuff marks.

(Rebecca Armstrong, The i, 2019)

What’s bizarre is someone paying over £600 for a pair of trainers – filthy or not.

Pierced Ears

A Lady with a Gold Chain and Earrings

Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1826-1869)

Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

Conch, rook, helix, daith: these words won’t mean anything to most people, but to an army of voguish women, they are immediately recognisable as the parts of the ear that can be pierced.

…They’re all fans of the “curated ear” – a craze for multiple ear piercings in unusual placements – that has arguably replaced tattoos as the body adornment du jour.

…So what is the appeal? “There was a good portion of my life where I was dunking my ears in salt water for most of an evening,” says Caitlan Quinlan, a 23-year-old who works in the film industry. She has ten piercings across both of her ears, all in gold. “I got a few compliments on my ears and I always really like it, because I feel I’ve achieved something – I’ve curated my ears, and it’s nice that people notice it.”

Another ear-piercing fan says: “I think I just need the rush every six months of having a stranger stab me with something very sharp in a safe and controlled environment.”

…A Maria Tash ear does not come cheap: prices range from £42 for a simple gold threaded stud, to £5,890 for a pear-shaped diamond. As they are designed to be “stacked” in an ear, getting the look can run into thousands of pounds.

…But the mania for piercings isn’t risk-free. After Halligan got her rook pierced in February, it got infected. “There’s no pain that can describe your cartilage swelling,” she says grimacing. Halligan spent three days in hospital on an antibiotic drip. While there, hospital staff removed all her other piercings. “I could hear all of the little barbells dropping into a pot. I kept thinking: ‘That’s 20 quid.’ I was so upset. Had Halligan not sought medical help, however, the infection could have spread to her brain.

(Sirin Kale, The Guardian, 2019)

So, have I got this right? One of the girls continues to get her ear pierced because she feels she has achieved something by getting complimented whilst the other gets a rush by being stabbed by a stranger. Strange world.