Kill Chords

Investigation had told us that a TV executive preferred to board his super-powerful speedboat prepared with a glass of wine rather than a kill cord and so killed himself and his 8 year old daughter, as well as mashing up his wife and 4 -year-old son.

And of course when helicopters aren't dropping out of the sky onto Glasgow pubs, they are dropping into the North Sea or killing people in training exercises, or finishing off a few first- aid personnel.

Michael Schumacher was apparently travelling at low speed, before his accident, which is likely to leave him with long-standing brain injury. Or worse.

A 25-year-old skydiver who,on jumping out of the plane was knocked unconscious by one of his teammates. Another deployed his parachute for him and he regained consciousness shortly before he landed.

Yesterday, I read a story of a 16-year-old girl surviving a 3000ft fall in a skydiving accident, when her parachute didn't inflate properly. 

Maybe it's just as well that she was young and bendy as she is still alive, but this was her first parachute jump and her father jumped just before her. He of course has been all over the news, wondering how it was allowed. But he must know. It was allowed by him.

He realised pretty late in the day that this wasn't one of the nice easy "tandem jumps" where someone else does the hard work for you. (And when he realised, nothing changed).
This was a static line jump.

People who make pressure decisions make them at those moments.
I know. I've made a few.
Wrong decisions are made by having the wrong people in post  - the people who shouldn't be making them - some cruise ship captains for example.
These are abilities you'll never detect at interview, never discover on a CV.

In fact, I don't blame the father at all. I think the sort of people who teach parachuting are not likely to be the best teachers, or the easiest people to question, contradict or cross. Any student of their services is obliged to trust them with their lives.

And I'm in the minority of parachute jumpers that you will have met because I have done a static line jump.
Let me tell you the difference. 

Unlike a tandem jump when you hope to land on the soft underbelly of your heroic self-sacrificing instructor should anything go wrong, your chute is activated on jumping but...

1. You jump out of the plane on your own.
2. If something goes wrong, it is not improbable that you might die. (after all, nobody is coming to help)

Over the past 20 years. I have frequently thought back to the afternoon I did this for two reasons. One is that I was using a new camera and misloaded the film cartridge meaning that I have no photos of the event (hmmph!).
Secondly, I've always wondered if I would have pulled my reserve chute had my main chute not opened. I still wonder.

Now, I had done the training which had taken two fairly tedious days - just as the girl in Oklahoma had. I even had a couple of years on her, not that that may count for anything. And I remember the distinct lesson about the reserve chute which was when pushing it away from your tummy, don't let it go through your legs, otherwise you'll get sore bollocks - in itself quite a disincentive to deploy the second chute!

But...
I don't think I had the message fully rammed home about the things that could go wrong and exactly when to perform a number two (as I might have called it had I not thought of it till now). Being reminded that it was very unlikely to be needed is the sort of reassuring message that could cost you your life. Decisions like that come down to seconds, moments.

And I did have problems on the way down. My head was forced forward onto my chest so I couldn't look up to check the canopy. The ropes were twisted. I rotated several times before they untwisted. This seemed to take forever. Eventually I could look up, and mercifully the ground had not yet arrived. But having never jumped out of a plane before (or since), I had no point of reference about how fast the ground was approaching. Frankly, I had enough to think about.

If you can't check your canopy - do you deploy your reserve chute? Would that be enough to risk your life, with two chutes competing for each other, and squeezing the life out of your testicles?
We hadn't covered this option.

And being at only 2000 feet, there wasn't a lot of time to think.
But thankfully the chute was open. Only then could I start to think about steering, which expecting it to be reasonably responsive, took me my remaining minute to discover wasn't very responsive at all.
I landed on the only strip of concrete in the entire field. But a decent falling technique meant I didn't break anything.

I didn't warm to the sort of people who ran the parachuting. I still don't warm to the kind of person who might tell me it was their primary hobby, though I might take the time to advise them to go to a comedy show, read a book or get an interest that might make them interesting.

I particularly didn't take to them when I realised after the jump that I had to repack my own chute. It made me wonder who'd packed mine. I'm pretty sure this is standard practice for these lazy people, because I found it a spectacular pain in the neck and myself pretty clueless on how to do it.

Be careful whose hands you put your life in. These are people who probably know how to jump but didn't know how to teach. That's when bad things happen.

I think the point I'm making is things are dangerous.
Not every item on your bucket list is worth the effort.

Experiences are not scalps and they are not stamps. Don't just collect them. Life isn't a checklist and it's not a bucket list.

Choose the ones that can expand you, that nurture you, that grow you.

You can't catch them all. 

And there is no reason to think you need to.

Eezy as ABC

Over the years, the Edinburgh Comedy Award has been sponsored by Perrier, Intelligent Finance, Fosters.

Surely... surely.. it should be EE.

Horizon: Sugar vs Fat

Today's award for the most inappropriately named  documentary goes to today's Horizon. Instead of actually looking at sugar, they included all carbs (complex starch, seeds, roughage, vegetable - pretty much everything counted the sugar) versus well fat. Only in the last 15 min today start to mention refined sugar in the forms of donuts and treats in general.

"As doctors would love to give you one pill to fix all this..."  screamed the BBC twin doctors presenters. Unfortunately, their genetic situation seem to be the only reason they were chosen to present. They informed us, presumably in the interests of disclosure, that they specialised in infectious diseases and tropical medicine.

Not a great track record for a documentary about a primary-care epidemic, but hey a medical degree is a medical degree. At least they weren't nurse practitioners.

They came over as a pair of dullish dimwits well supported by appropriate expertise. One chap in a lab coat had particular TV charisma could have done a better job of presenting the whole thing.

Our twin male doctors got down to their boxer shorts twice and had a bit of forced fake repartee to try to spice things up. Unfortunately been witless, it didn't, mild amusement not being their specialty either.

I have to confess I thought I knew what the conclusion was going to be namely that fat is not as bad as we thought it was and sugar is the new(ish)  evil.

But I was wrong. That wasn't what they concluded.

Their conclusion - that it is actually the "treats"  - the combination of sugar and fat that makes you fat. Eating fat doesn't make you fat and eating sugar doesn't make you fat.

It seemed like exercise strips muscle from the twin on the high sugar diet as well as the twin on the high-fat diet. Wasting muscle is bad.

You must do some exercise, but if you don't have any easy sugar available you'll dissolve your own muscle.

The high sugar diet improved your insulin output ( but I'm guessing you would run out of insulin before the end of your need for it, and you'll develop a popular disease).

But even the high-fat, no sugar diet, increased insulin resistance, sugar levels increased and one of our twins became prediabetic.

It's a no-win situation... if you're looking for a easy answers. 

Somebody at one point briefly seemed to mention the word calories. 

Does anybody remember them?

The Past

What does it take to iterate a quality or characteristic out of a nation?

How long would/did it take to take away the politeness from the British?
What would it take to extract the infidelity from France or the
corruption from Italy?
How long did it take gritty soaps and reality TV to turn us into
baiting slobs.. to feed us a diet of distress and voyeurism? 10 years?
20?
And is there really anywhere to go from here in "reality" that is still legal?

What would it take to take the taste of war from a generation - five
years - 50, maybe a couple of generations of peace would do it, enough
for memories to die or deny, enough to allow history to repeat. What
does it take to forget? And when it is not something you have
personally remembered, is forget even the right word?

When do we sit back and resolve who we actually are, what we actually
want of the new, and what we sufficiently respect and admire in the
old to try to remember, relearn, or reincorporate?

Build It Up, Buttercup

There's always a lot of argument between nature and nurture, what
makes us. What makes us up.
It's about personal invention and the summit of individual fabrication.
It's iteration.
What builds a business or computer process is iterative change –
change by instalments, by increments, by gradual progression into
something else.
It's how humanity and every other species develops. So surely it must
be the way we develop as individuals? It must be.

But is it?
When you put the question this way, is it really true?
Because when your basic growth is done, you may evaluate the many
things you tried at school to see if you have a taste for, the
extracurricular activities you may have developed a fondness or hatred
for. Hobbies, ambitions, games played.
When your templates are installed, you have some parts that are
largely automatic. Your patterns and character are laid for adulthood.
You have operating system.
YOU have been uploaded.

Then, as you progress through life, its challenges and changes, are
you building up who you are?
Or are you actually digging you out?

Big Up

Have you ever noticed during the booming introductions they give
nowadays at the snooker tournaments for the televis that… no, well,
you wouldn't have but.. anyway... they give booming introductions at
the snook.

And of course they reel off your credentials - winner of this in that
year, winner of that in the other year, runner-up in this, qualifier
in that, reached the quarters then.

The trouble is, if you haven't achieved much worth booming about, what
are they going to say?

That's where they employ the default line "one of the nicest guys in snooker".

Well, isn't that nice?
Proof that nice guys come last.

I'm going to grow some stubble and start gesturing like a rapper.
Hope it works in healthcare.

Snooker Loopy

It's interesting how snooker divides people should you choose to discuss it with them.

There are the people with intelligence, heart, soul, character, integrity and humanity to whom it appeals.

And then there's the other morons.

Well, Improbable....Maybe

Yesterday, I bought a velvet jacket.
I think I had been secretly promising myself one for years, but I've been exploring my inner crevices recently, and not in a good way.
In the past, I've shopped for one with a friend, whom we mutually cast as Marvo the Magician in a sketch that we co-wrote.....(voice goes slightly croaky, and mimics holding a walking stick) "some years ago now".
And if you forgive me, I have a bit of a soft spot for velvet.
Plush, you see.
It's an Edwardian curtain, a Sherlockian smoking jacket, a Pastor's cushion. Who doesn't like velvet? I'm cheap, so I'd settle for velveteen but it's all the same to me.
But give me a choice of material and it will be one of two – velvet or chenille.
I know what you're thinking. They're the only two materials you know. And you'd be right. I have read about cotton on washing instructions.  It looks complicated.
Apparently you're supposed to separate colours – what the f..... who knew?

And just to show what a modern fairy I am, today I "steamed" my velvet jacket. And this… in a man who's never made his own dumplings. Crazy.

Of course, yesterday I bought a velvet jacket. I know. I'm repeating myself. But this time the emphasis was on the "I". (So it's your fault).
I bought it second-hand (now known as vintage, nice one fellas!) from an Internet site that has 15,000 items for sale.

Now, sit back readers because it so happens  that this worldwide enterprise is located within a 7 minute drive of me, let's call it 3 miles between friends.
So I suggested to them that I would "pick up" as I am no stranger to subverting civilisation. I even drove down to the store to tell them so....I mean, look into the possibility.
"It's impossible", the pleasant beardy informed.
Impossible!
"We couldn't possibly do that with so many items. We separate what to put in the shop but the majority of stuff is online".
He was a very nice chap. You know - bearded in a disturbingly blonde way but well spoken, bohemian and we were, it has to be said, mutually cold (not to each other – it's just that it was effing freezing in that hangar - but then they have a lot of items you know - bastards). It was only when I saw he had no velvet, I smelled weakness.
I drove home.

That same afternoon I bought one of their items online - a velvet jacket, navy... with a tale or two to tell. I asked them to deliver it to their own shop and following the playfully calm deployment of one or two mildly sophisticated gambits, they agreed. They even  offered a reimbursement of the postage. That was unnecessary, I said, feeling magnanimous. The speed  of transaction was "worth it" to me. In reality I didn't want to compromise their training and also I didn't want anybody out-of-pocket if it didn't fit me and therefore I had to return it (or in this case, my derived scenario, not remove it from the building in the first place).
After all, I was buying a jacket on the Internet. What sort of a half wit does that? (Hello, have we met?)

I popped down to collect it a few hours later, hoping (I must confess) to train them about the modern nefarious joys of "in-store pickup" - saviour of the High Street. I walked straight to the counter (I'd been there before, remember?  Just a few hours before, but certainly before).  
And I was (pretty much) well..... greeted!! (15,000 items and you greet me. What's happening here... a sense of community?)
OK, not so much greeted,  perhaps, as expected. (Possibly even tolerated. I'd even settle for humoured).
The order was hot, fresh, you see.
Like me.
And of course nobody had tried to reorganise their business for them before. It was a new thing. I'd clearly been the subject of, or barely (not really) party to (clears throat) ...discussion. A discussion which involved flexible bohemian minds. Now, sit down because I'm including mine amongst them  - if buying  a second-hand velvet jacket doesn't count me as bohemian, then frankly, my dear, insert gesture here. The rather lovely thing is that it was a game in which every party chose to participate and which ended in solution in which everybody won.

"Have you come for the jacket?" Err, yes, I hesitated and checked in case there was someone standing behind me, wondering if there were talking to me (while also knowing I had come for a jacket, err.... the jacket.).
Don't get me wrong. I know  we are a being watched and that there is a big spaceship behind the moon waiting for its moment, but they didn't know me. No way, man.
I gave myself an opportunity to try on the jacket (this was my master plan!). And it fitted like a g... well, like a jacket.

I steamed it today.
I did good.
And I'm expecting to hear of their revised in-store policy pretty darn soon.
Impossible?

I eat impossible for breakfast.

I'm Mr Impossible. 

Long Hours, Short Days

It's tough out there.
To make ends meet, people are working from dawn till dusk.
Trouble is - that's only 6 hours in Britain in winter.

Lazy slackers!

Cocktail Hour

Everybody loves an optimist, don't they? But a blind optimist? Is that so good? I'm not talking Ray Charles blind here so don't pick me up on that.

Everybody loves somebody who is spontaneous, but is somebody who doesn't think equally attractive?

Everybody loves somebody who can smile, but it shouldn't be too forced, should it?

It is something to do with "what comes naturally".

These are the ingredients of your cocktail.

That makes you the mixologist. 

Your glass can be half full, but you might need to change the water regularly. 

Absence of Malice

Do you think people are malicious if they hurt you?
It is tempting isn't it, but generally speaking, I'm not sure if I do.
It's more likely that they are inadequate or not engaged.

Do you believe in conspiracies?
Now I love a good conspiracy, but let's assume for a second that they
are all nonsense (they are not!) and that the world is just not that
sophisticated, or perhaps too sophisticated to make it possible.
In that case, is it true that global disorganisation is the actual
reason why the banks/financiers/captains of
industry/politicians/(cough) "leaders" fail so regularly to have a
positive influence on things? Are the results that they claim they've
influenced generally anything more than chance happenings?
It's a fantastic cover for incompetence, screaming to be spun any way
that these czars and lords of business choose.
These well rounded individuals try to persuade us that because of
their apparent expertise in a single aspect they truly understand some
bigger picture. It's all a bit ridiculous. I'd rather believe that
there is an alien civilisation hidden just behind the moon.

So if somebody hurts you, apart from a species of comically,
malicious, catty women and a few acid-throwing Muslims to whom it's a
bit of a stock in trade, then it may be that the reason you're feeling
bad is not because you are fielding someone's malice.

Maybe you just had a taste of the priorities people have for
themselves, or you have not fully realised someone else's truth in a
situation. If you practice, this occurrence should become less
frequent. Which means it will hurt all the more, when you miss it next
time.

It's generally not malice.
Maybe people just don't give a stuff about you.
It's much more likely to be a lack of interest, other priorities, lack
of caring, lack of love, lack of thought, self protection, or million
other agendas. People frequently don't care about your feelings. And
even if they do, they don't give them much thought, do they? Well not
as much as you do anyway. How could they?

It's generally not malice.
Assume that is the case and you might find it in your heart to
forgive, forget and move on.
But sometimes, assume too, that it won't be easy.

"A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations"

If you don't test your limits, you don't know your capacity.

You probably agree that that's a pretty familiar concept. We see it everywhere. 

"Just do it"

"Push yourself".  

"Give me three more".

"Strive to Achieve"

"Per Ardua ad Astram"

Steps may have said it best ... "Reach for the stars"

We are supposed to work hard because...well, why? After all it's hard isn't it? Wouldn't you rather not bother? Isn't easy better than hard?

So we tell ourselves vaguely that working hard achieves things. Working hard is good. It shows dedication and discipline, endeavour, hope and clarity - bla, bla, bla, you know all those things that were popular in the 70s.

And yet nowadays corruption, celebrity and an easy life are equally popular and considerably more fashionable things to aim for.

Nevertheless, despite the world around us contradicting traditional principles, we occasionally choose to remind ourselves that if we reach and push, then we might achieve. At the very least we can learn about our potential. We've got to be able to agree that's a good thing.

I'm sure I've paraphrased such sickly sweet intents here often enough.

But try this.

If you don't test your capacity, you don't know your limits.

Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry taught a generation too young to watch his movies that "a man's gotta know his limitations".

When my father was dying, he started to exercise for probably the first time in his life. He kept good records so when I saw his records of his achievements on the treadmill - a mile on the jogging/running/actually walking treadmill taking over half an hour, it occurred to me that 2 miles an hour is a limit worth knowing about. 

One you wouldn't know about if you lived within your limits and if you hadn't put your capacity to the test.

In this case it would have revealed a dark story about a hidden health issue.

It's useful information, worth knowing about.

Fresh Food

I'm not big on defending the strange human creatures known as vegetarians. You know those translucent strangenesses who walk on and live off the shoulders of meat-eating giants. It must be difficult to face such a large platefuls of hypocrisy on a daily basis. I would have thought that the betrayal of our ancestors might end up short-circuiting the weaker of their number imploding them in a puff of rocket and Parmesan shavings.

But if I were to take the side of our vegetarian fiends.. for just a moment..then I might try to persuade my "normal" friends to prefix their meat dishes with the word "dead".

Surely, you'd be able to convert a few to your religion by re-designating their 'chicken sandwich' a 'dead chicken sandwich' or their Christmas dinner a 'dead turkey roast'.

You don't get the same effect with dead carrot juice and dead Stilton and crackers. 

Particularly as the Stilton isn't dead, and I am not 100% on the mortality status of the carrot.

Pop TV!

There may be times when you have struggled with the darkness.

Times that piqued your interest in areas of conspiracy, the unknown, the unexplained.

The corners of your psyche may briefly have entertained the existence of areas where you have struggled with humanity or relationships or death. Or exams. Or driving on the left or right. Or why one of the otherwise very limited flavours of custard include banana.

You may have spent years coming to terms with the uncertainty of your job or life, death or wages, decency, integrity and the difference between life and living.

We won't discover all those answers in our lifetimes.

A single objection from a senior corrupt Egyptian historian (Egyptologist, really?) means we'll never know what is hidden under the front paws of the Sphinx. We may never discover the Hall of Records. We won't have a man on Mars in our lifetime, and when we set foot on the moon again, it will probably be part of a reality TV series.

But there are other darker, deeper and more sinister unknowns. Things that it is hard to see where reason lies. Or if. 

We can understand that we get light from 93 million miles away and even that our life-giving Sun will eventually die although not before mourning the death of its third child for millions of years. (Gaiea is female you know),

There are darknesses, horrors, sinisterisms that may never be explained. Not in any form that is decent or right, logical or coherent.

They have had many names throughout history. 

They've taken many forms. 

But I'm here to tell you of the current vessels they plumb their depths in.

Tell no-one or tell everyone. 

Only you can choose.

The vaults of the unexplained names these putrid devils for eternity and they are two.

Russell Howard and Dermot O'Leary.

Save us Lord if, in your darkest nightmares, we have deserved anything that may visit us next.

Run for Home

I managed a 42 minute run today for the first time in years... it was fairly painless as I was egged on by the first episode of Breaking Bad on a portable device, suspended by a two dollar "gadget" that can stick it anywhere.

I hope the series is as good as the universe has claimed... I'm looking forward to meeting an ab.
If not then I have an app already downloaded where Zombies will chase me into fitness...

We're terribly modern. Aren't we?

Olden Times

Good to see that both main political parties have made a commitment to pensions saying that they will rise by 2.5% every year regardless of nuclear incident, incoming cold fronts and unexpected swells.

So this year you can retire at 65, but next year that will increase to 64 and a half, and 67 the year after.
Now that's electioneering.

Underwear

Do you think it matters what's under our neath, in the vast scheme of things I mean?

The obvious answer is yes, but in this day and age, is it really true any more?

It's not the part of us that people perceive except through cracks in our coverings, glimpses through dusty windows, misinterpreted clues bordering on hallucination.

Do you think what is underneath matters to people in the public eye, modern celebrity, your boss, most of your friends, or anybody into fashion or presentation? 

Do think it matters to those who teach you how to "be better" - you know, those performance trainers or counsellors who label themselves experts on humanity and yet who might just as easily have waffles and cream cakes for breakfast and drive at 50 in the fast lane? 

It seems to me that a lot of these people who are claiming to represent the human condition are really advising on presenting facade. They're looking to teach covers for what's underneath. Their version of real, is quite uninformed, pretendy, fake.

I can't ask counsellors to be honest about that because they don't realise it.

I'd need to ask them to realise it then be honest about it. I think that's too big a leap for them. It's back-to-school territory. They'll balk.

And who are people like that to mess around with what's underneath? Save us from the entry-level psychologists.. wasn't there a time when they just went to be extras and page 3 models?

Why would things be underneath if they really mattered? What sort of art is that? 

But of course art is the purest facade of all. Denied of course by the interpretive and interpreted nonsense that marble-mouthed connoisseurs spout. But there you are... that's their facade.

Show me a desk with a secret drawer, a room with a a secret chamber, and I'll show you art that engages with what's underneath. 

Why else would we have chambers that are a little bit buried, a little bit hidden, a little bit unTwitterable, unutterable, a little bit private, not for sale, not for correction?

You can sugarcoat dog shit and stick it on a Christmas tree and sometimes it's the salt that sells the peanut.

Actually strike out the other lines... I think that's what I was trying to get at all along.

Print It!

How do you measure how many prints you will leave in the snow today?
Do not disturb. Don't rock the boat. Keep out of the limelight. That
sort of thing?

Will your toe gently flick the drifted sands aside like a child
playing with a plate of cold spaghetti?
Or will it buy a ticket and leave a big Size 10 right in the middle of
the action.

Even as we print our marks and mark our territory, we imprint others,
we mark their territory.
They must decide how much to allow. Or not decide and follow the
swell. Logic after all, let's face it, is boring.
Too much = heartache. Too little = heartache.

Why not try every new piece of music out there? Spotify will let you.
But are you sure you won't drown, get confused, exhausted, scared
you're missing something better, truer?
Isn't it better to stick to that well-loved album whose inflections
and scratches you know by ear and by heart?

Where will you dance your dance hall days...in the shadows or in the
lead? At risk of cold, or safe in the front room having set fire to
the third bar?

I say put your muddy footprints all over the carpet.
That's why we have mud.
That's why we have carpet.
That's why we have domestic staff.

And it you have something true to say, step occasionally into the limelight.
That's why we have limelight.

I Really Shouldn't Have Been Expecting You

Everytime I catch a whiff of an Indiana Jones movie I have to parade around the flat doing 20 minutes of ....

"So, Mr Jones..."  in any pleasingly aggressive Germanic accent (is there any other kind?)

Or "Finally, Mr Jones..." in anything that sounds vaguely slavic.

Or surprise myself in the mirror with a considered "Ahh, Mr Jones" in some sort of Eastern European lilt.

As you can see, very little factual information of consequence needs to be articulated ..the rule is that it's pretty much any syllable followed by a stupendously over-articulated "Mr Jones".

I have to say, I do find this highly entertaining.

It's just that I can't claim it's a particularly good use of my time!

My Two New Year Resolutions

1. Get finger out

2. Avoid chinning from Brian Blessed.