train, cross the road and all without needing any awareness of what’s happening in the brain.
Yet this reality we create for ourselves can easily get disturbed. Eleanor finds it hard to judge time without a clock. How much harder would it be with no daylight and no one else to ask?
OPERATION TIME
For two months, or 1,500 hours, Michel Siffre had lived in total isolation underground in the French Alps with no idea whether it was night or day. He allowed his body to tell him when to rest and went to bed whenever he felt tired, describing this body-dictated sleep as more perfect than he could ever have above ground. He ate when he was hungry. But he soon lost his appetite. The one advantage of the low temperatures was that his food stayed fresher for longer than he had expected, but he was no cook and his attempts to make rice pudding went so wrong that he had to open a tin of pineapple chunks to take the taste away. In the end he found he only really enjoyed bread and cheese. Each day he read, kept a diary and noted down physiological measurements from the electrodes fixed to his head and chest. The experiment he had dreamed of conducting for so long was going well, but he was becoming increasinglymiserable. His mattress was made from a thick piece of sponge, but because it lay on a floor of ice in below-freezing temperatures, the bed was often damp. His feet were permanently wet and the air permanently dank. His clothes never dried out overnight, so he would put them back on next day and shudder at the bitter wetness against his skin. After spending so many hours sitting down each day he developed back pain, but was determined not to take painkillers in case they interfered with his physiological experiments.
Michel found himself passing the hours by contemplating another time entirely – the future. He tried to find ways to entertain himself; his version of quoits involved attempting to throw sugar lumps into a pan of boiling water. A record player had been lowered down the shaft for company, but Beethoven and Mario Lanza weren’t a success. ‘The symphonies that had once charmed me became merely chaotic noise. And the popular songs sung by the best café singers seemed only to increase my feeling of loneliness.’ He was so lonely that the only thing he describes with any real pleasure in his diary is a spider he captured and kept in a box as a pet. He talks of often looking at her and feeding her tiny amounts of food and liquid.
However, despite the wet conditions and his increasing hatred for the yellow lining of his tent, he became so fond of his makeshift home that he began to spend more and more time in bed, leaving the tent as infrequently as possible. When he did venture out into the cave to take measurements he loved to look back and see his cosy, freezing home glowing in the dark. He soon lost interest in keeping the cave tidy and allowed the rubbish to pile up outside thefront of his tent. The low temperatures meant that the food was slow to rot, but he did notice mildew growing on an apple core and, ever on the look-out for an opportunity to experiment, he left a line of apple cores so that someone could check on the mildew’s progress the following year.
With no daylight Michel developed a squint and found it increasingly hard to distinguish green from blue. He didn’t feel claustrophobic, but towards the end of his underground stay he was experiencing dizzy spells and afterwards doctors confirmed that his body had entered a state they called ‘incipient hibernation’.
Throughout his stay two members of the team remained above ground at the cave’s entrance, sitting in baking sun during the day and lying in freezing temperatures at night. They were forbidden from contacting him lest this give him a clue as to the time of day. Instead, a telephone line had been rigged up which linked him with the surface and he called them whenever he woke, ate or was planning to sleep. They were under instruction
Yet this reality we create for ourselves can easily get disturbed. Eleanor finds it hard to judge time without a clock. How much harder would it be with no daylight and no one else to ask?
OPERATION TIME
For two months, or 1,500 hours, Michel Siffre had lived in total isolation underground in the French Alps with no idea whether it was night or day. He allowed his body to tell him when to rest and went to bed whenever he felt tired, describing this body-dictated sleep as more perfect than he could ever have above ground. He ate when he was hungry. But he soon lost his appetite. The one advantage of the low temperatures was that his food stayed fresher for longer than he had expected, but he was no cook and his attempts to make rice pudding went so wrong that he had to open a tin of pineapple chunks to take the taste away. In the end he found he only really enjoyed bread and cheese. Each day he read, kept a diary and noted down physiological measurements from the electrodes fixed to his head and chest. The experiment he had dreamed of conducting for so long was going well, but he was becoming increasinglymiserable. His mattress was made from a thick piece of sponge, but because it lay on a floor of ice in below-freezing temperatures, the bed was often damp. His feet were permanently wet and the air permanently dank. His clothes never dried out overnight, so he would put them back on next day and shudder at the bitter wetness against his skin. After spending so many hours sitting down each day he developed back pain, but was determined not to take painkillers in case they interfered with his physiological experiments.
Michel found himself passing the hours by contemplating another time entirely – the future. He tried to find ways to entertain himself; his version of quoits involved attempting to throw sugar lumps into a pan of boiling water. A record player had been lowered down the shaft for company, but Beethoven and Mario Lanza weren’t a success. ‘The symphonies that had once charmed me became merely chaotic noise. And the popular songs sung by the best café singers seemed only to increase my feeling of loneliness.’ He was so lonely that the only thing he describes with any real pleasure in his diary is a spider he captured and kept in a box as a pet. He talks of often looking at her and feeding her tiny amounts of food and liquid.
However, despite the wet conditions and his increasing hatred for the yellow lining of his tent, he became so fond of his makeshift home that he began to spend more and more time in bed, leaving the tent as infrequently as possible. When he did venture out into the cave to take measurements he loved to look back and see his cosy, freezing home glowing in the dark. He soon lost interest in keeping the cave tidy and allowed the rubbish to pile up outside thefront of his tent. The low temperatures meant that the food was slow to rot, but he did notice mildew growing on an apple core and, ever on the look-out for an opportunity to experiment, he left a line of apple cores so that someone could check on the mildew’s progress the following year.
With no daylight Michel developed a squint and found it increasingly hard to distinguish green from blue. He didn’t feel claustrophobic, but towards the end of his underground stay he was experiencing dizzy spells and afterwards doctors confirmed that his body had entered a state they called ‘incipient hibernation’.
Throughout his stay two members of the team remained above ground at the cave’s entrance, sitting in baking sun during the day and lying in freezing temperatures at night. They were forbidden from contacting him lest this give him a clue as to the time of day. Instead, a telephone line had been rigged up which linked him with the surface and he called them whenever he woke, ate or was planning to sleep. They were under instruction
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