WHERE WAS SIMON COWELL WHEN I NEEDED HIM?

Back in the days when I was a Finance Director, we used to deal with a then relatively unknown, but very large Far Eastern company which made among other things, motor vehicles. We ended up arranging a big shareholder deal with them in Poland, which was where they ended up having their Headquarters. As part of the seemingly unending negotiations before the contracts were signed, I went over to Poland for a few days to sort out a few final contractual odds and ends. One of the guys who worked for me (let’s call him John) came with me, and we were put up in the Far Eastern company owned "Hotel", which was less like a Hotel and more like a cross between an Open Prison and a rather strictly run 2nd Division British Public School Boarding House.

Come the last evening before we left, the Management there put on a formal dinner for us. So around 7pm, we dutifully trooped down for the meal.

The Far Eastern/Polish composite meal itself seemed to be a means by which the maximum amount of alcoholic spirit could be introduced into the body as quickly as possible. It started with shots of alcohol, which were topped up ceaselessly and relentlessly throughout each course (one of which I remember seemed to be Vodka on a bed of Cold Cabbage - mmmm, Yummy!) including dessert. They came with the coffee, and then, after the meal, they got onto the real purpose of the evening, which was to drink more alcohol. For each top-up, there was an increasingly rambling sort of speech from one of the twenty or so people gathered around the table. Given the need to maintain my svelte like profile, I gave up at the umpteenth round of drinks. I am sure by that time, which was around the dessert, I was already telling everyone around me who would listen, that I really, really loved them, and that I was their friend.

“John” however was made from sterner stuff, and had been training for this day for most of his life. If it was going to be a drinking competition, then he was up for it. He took them on, and it soon turned personal. The host was a Far Eastern gentleman who was Second in Command of the Company there, and was in charge because the Boss Man was away on business, and was expected back later that evening. He and John swopped drinks and speeches until the Host ceremonially upturned his glass onto the table indicating that the English (who was actually Welsh) had won. I suspect that this gave our side an immense number of International Brownie points, and that John, from that time forward, was deified or canonized in the strangely different mind of the Far Eastern Business executive.

The meal finished (from my viewpoint, at least) in a beautiful soft-focus haze, and we moved into a large room sparsely littered with easy chairs, and what looked like a television cabinet in the corner. I expected that what was to follow was a gentle half hour of inter-company male bonding before bed. Oh how naïve can a poor Finance Director be?

When the host ceremoniously opened the doors to the "television" cabinet in the room, what appeared inside was not a TV, but what looked suspiciously like a juke box. Clearly they were going to play us some music – how thoughtful.

Hang on a minute! The host is approaching me with what looks very much like a restaurant menu, and, bloody hell, a microphone. My mind suddenly added all the parts up, and got the total to somewhere near Four. It was going to be a karaoke evening!

It did not take very long to realise that, as the most senior British person there, I was to be accorded the great honour of starting the cabaret off for the 30 or so people who had now gathered to witness what was to follow. He handed me the mike and the "menu", which was now, only too clearly, the list of songs available on the very high tech machine behind me.

I will remember for a very long time the real feeling that what was required NOW from me was either a dead feint or a small localised earthquake just under my feet. But then I thought of John. If he had stuffed them on the drinking front, the Dunkirk spirit, or more likely the Vodka spirit, made me decide to go for the best out of three on the singing front.

Without being immodest, I have a reasonable singing voice - after all, I am half Welsh. I am most definitely not Tone deaf, and I have some awareness of the need for light and shade, phrasing and timing in Pop songs, although the shower head in our bathroom is the only object in my life that has really heard me giving it a real go.

All of which was great until upon opening the book, which had some 30 pages in it. What I saw was all in some Far Eastern script, which looked for all the world like a row of toe-nail clippings. So I'm standing there, turning the pages over with an increasing level of panic, and willing the possibility of the small earthquake to return. On the very last page, and I swear I saw the glint of a smile on the host's face when I turned it over, was a list in ENGLISH.

I looked down the list, and Glory Be, there it was – “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. Not only did I like the song, I could hear it in my mind, as well as a lot of other things. So that was it. I roughed up my hair to make it look like an explosion in a mattress factory, and went for it. "Tonight, Mathew, I'm going to be Art Garfunkel”.

To be scrupulously honest, I had probably imbibed an amount of alcohol exactly on the cusp of perfection, and it had been circulating in my body for the absolutely optimum amount of time, to create that Nirvanah-like state of grace where I probably thought I was Art Garfunkel.

Actually, I really quite enjoyed it. They all stood up and clapped/cheered, and I had the inkling of the feeling that many stage performers say they get when the audience's adulation becomes a drug – but only for a second or two.

Onto the next performer, who was Korean, who duly sang, and was duly applauded. After a few rounds of this, it became clear that this was their form of Team Building at work, as everyone who sang, however good, or however unbelievably bad, was treated to an ovation. John had a go, proving quite conclusively that not all Welshmen can sing. Then right at the end, and it must have been the last effects of the evening's drink on me, I decided that he and I would perform a duet. Ye Gods!

Can you imagine, he and I up in front of thirty or so totally bemused foreigners listening to a spherical Welshman with a beard, and a gangly, rather handsome Finance Director performing Sonny and Cher's "I've got you Babe".

I thank my lucky stars that there was no-one in that room who had a camera or video recorder with them – it was un-live-downable. For the record, John was Sonny – well he had to be with the beard, and I was Cher, and we gave it a real go. I am sure John had no idea of what was happening, as the alcohol was most definitely getting/had got the better of him, but this sticks clearly in my mind as the absolute zenith of my international singing career.

Then, having finally passed the microphone round everyone in the room, everything subsided and you wondered – What next?

The answer was not long coming. The background music started up, but the mike had disappeared. This time, the host walked, rather too purposefully for my liking, towards me. If I didn't know any better, I would have said he was going to ask me to dance. Bloody Hell, he was! He indicated that he and I would take to the floor. I couldn’t believe it.

What do you do? – this is the male equivalent of lying back and thinking of England? Thank God for the drink. He held his arms out, and I gave in. In for a penny……

I do remember thinking – Who's going to lead and take the man's role in this bizarre pairing? I only knew how to do the male bit, and if his thoughts were the same, then immediately the thing started, the first parts of our anatomy which would touch, with some force, would be something which was well hidden in my trousers - the only problem was that his wasn't.

You know the way sometimes, you have to decide where the line in the sand is. I decided if there was the most minimal iota of contact in the naughty part region, even the slightest, tenderest brush, I'm going for my Pocket Leatherman knife, and it will be “Bobbit-Time”, International Team Building notwithstanding.

But they all got up and joined in, looking for all the world like a Series 2 version of Strictly Come Dancing (slightly inappropriate title in this case!), so my acute embarrassment was hidden among thirty blokes waltzing rather drunkenly around the room.

Time for Bed, said Zebedee, and I admit to a slight lack of recall at the process of disengagement. The things we do in the interests of International Commerce.

What I really would have liked would have been to see my then Boss there as Guest of Honour, and his having to face the possibility of singing and dancing for his supper. He would have absolutely hated it. Sometimes, when I’m feeling a bit pissed off – all I have to do is bring that thought to the front of my mind, and I’m smiling again.

OH DEAR!

I don’t know the Arabic equivalent of “Schadenfreude”, but after seeing this, they sure need one. You need to know that no-one was apparently seriously hurt, so - Read this, look at the pictures, and come to your own conclusions.

A friend sent it to me, almost disbelievingly. Apparently, it happened last November, but I hadn’t seen it before now, and it rather took by breath away. A couple of other friends “in the know” broadly confirmed what had happened and added a couple of other comments about it.

The report below (in blue) has come from one of the library things that report Industry goings on. You may wonder why it hasn’t all been splashed around the newspapers, but I suspect that neither the makers, nor the airline, and especially not the aircrew, can see any PR Brownie Points at all in showing it to the rest of the world. There are a couple of anodyne Press releases on Airbus’s Website, but you wouldn’t imagine from them the scale of what happened.

The brand spanking new Airbus A340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built (Author’s note – it’s not!), sat in its hangar in Toulouse, France without a single hour of airtime.

Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine runups, prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi. The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft. Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is.

The takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats etc). Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm.

This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.

The computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward. The ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on.

Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $200 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totalling it.

Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, a friend reports that “The test crew came out the emergency exits in the cockpit without turning the power off. (Actually, looking at the photos, I’m not sure they’d have been able to find the switches!) At least one engine kept going for hours and no one was brave enough to go back inside. They contacted Rolls Royce and there were suggestions that water should be pumped in the engine and even quick setting cement (!) but in the end they left it well alone to run out of fuel.”

Can you imagine it a few minutes later –

Scene: The Pilot’s Manager’s Office
Pilot: “Excuse me Boss….”
Boss: “Yes.”
Pilot: “Have you got a couple of minutes, there’s something I think you ought to know.”
Boss: “OK, fire away.”

There is a pause.

Pilot: “I think you should sit down first.”

Can you begin to imagine how much care was going to go into the writing of the Insurance Claim?

Tags:

etihad,a340,aviation

SIZE IS IMPORTANT

Many posts ago, I wrote a piece about car safety. In Europe and the USA, there are “independent” organisations (NCAP, in the case of Europe) which test most new cars using a standard test procedure. They then issue the results in the form of a points and a star (up to 5 – this being the best) rating. In these safety-philic times, every manufacturer puts a lot of effort into achieving the maximum Star rating. The marketeers each company employs to push the company’s image down our throats would not have it any other way.

Some companies, notably Renault in Europe, base a large part of their corporate market placement and positioning on making the company appear to the punters to be the “safest” in the marketplace. They don’t say it quite as baldly as that, but they’ve clearly decided that the safety moral high ground is where they want to be, or at least be seen to be.

But it’s not as simple as that. In Europe, when each of the new cars which major manufacturers produce are launched, they submit one to NCAP who put it through its safety paces, and then issues its safety rating. But all cars are not the same. NCAP categorise them into 9 classes ranging from the Supermini (ie little ones) to Large Off-Road 4x4s (those big buggers we all love to hate). And here’s the problem. Someone decided that rather than compare car safety absolutely ie all cars being considered against all the others, they would measure cars only within their own class. So you get a 5* Supermini and you also get a 5* Large Off-Road 4x4. You’d think 5* would be the same everywhere but, just like Animal Farm, some cars are more equal than others.

Two things happened to me this week, which set me off thinking about all this.

Firstly, I got into discussion with a colleague who maintained vehemently that his “5 Star” Supermini was just as safe as the “5 Star” 4x4 which I’d just parked outside the factory – simply because they both had 5 Stars.

Secondly, and a day later, I came across a picture in a Car magazine (Autocar) which showed a picture of a semi controlled crash between an Audi Q7 (the big one) and a Fiat 500 (the supermini). It had been organised by ADAC, a German Motoring organisation, and if you ever want a demonstration that “a picture speaks a thousand words” this is it. Both cars are granted 5 Stars by NCAP, but, well, which car would you rather have been in?

BIG CAR HITS SMALL CAR - SMALL CAR BECOMES MUCH SMALLER

I don’t know if it was Autocar’s rather childish sense of humour, or a simple report of what actually happened, but their caption said that the damage to the Q7 was limited to “a spilt mocha and a skipping CD”. The remains of the little 500 shows the passenger test dummy seeming to be making an unplanned and rather inelegant exit through the car’s side window.

The point here is simple. Basic Physics says that if a big thing hits a small thing, the big thing comes off best. But the way the safety people present their data to the world leads quite intelligent people up the wrong path, and by the time they find out they’re wrong, they could be in a hospital, or even worse.

Government clearly have conflicting issues here. They want to be seen as “Safety conscious”, so, very laudably, they want to load our cars with airbags, progressive crumple zones and other gubbins and gizmos which makes the cars heavier and heavier, and safer. Today’s Mark 5 VW Golf, for instance, weighs twice as much as a Mark 1 Golf from 30 years ago. But they also want to get the country thinking their way about carbon emissions and global warming, which means the smaller the better. So they have a dilemma. Waste and global warming seems to be hitting No.1 as the largest issue facing mankind, or at least the UK Government, with the result that big cars are now becoming the work of the devil.

So, the message that a big car is much safer than a small one now gives Those In Charge a real problem. You do wonder if they are therefore setting out to suppress this unpalatable piece of information, that, though they may emit twice as much Carbon Monoxide as their smaller brethren, they are actually a lot, lot, safer. Knowing a bit about the way Governments think, it's not surprising to find that when trying to find any data showing how safe a big car is in collision with a small one, you have to spend a good deal of time looking. I found a decent, reliable report a while ago, and, in the real world, ie one where big cars hit little ones, you could see its inevitable conclusion jumping out at you.

If you want the safest car you can buy, get a big one. You are up to some 30 times (no, that’s not a misprint) less likely to be killed or seriously injured having a crash in a large 4x4 than you are in some small cars. Some people may think that’s unfair (big cars are more expensive than small ones, and they do emit more undesirables than a small one), but you can’t get away from the fact that they are a LOT safer.

If we live in a market driven economy, why should that sort of information not be made available to us when we buy our next vehicle? If money is a problem for a buyer (and whenever isn’t it?), then they might choose to buy a low mileage one year old version of a larger car rather than a new small one, if safety was top of the list of their priorities. But only if they realise that increasing size tends to lead to increasing safety. Today, they probably think they’re buying the best and the safest they can, when they go for a 5 Star Supermini, and very simply they’re not.

If you look at NCAP’s website, and do a bit of delving in it, you can actually find a couple of rather coy comments about all this. To my simple eye, since the differences between the car classes are so large, you’d have thought they’d have warranted a lot more prominence – but it’s rather well hidden away in the FAQ section. This is what NCAP says –

Are large cars safer than small cars?

In frontal impacts between cars, the occupants of the heavier car or the one with higher structures tend to fare better than those travelling in lighter lower cars. As these effects are currently impossible to overcome, Euro NCAP only makes comparisons within size categories. The rating of a car within its size category is a function of the quality of its safety design.

Can results be compared between groups?

No. Results should only be compared within the same group. The frontal testing method mirrors a crash between two similar sized cars. A heavier car or one with a higher structure will tend to have an advantage if it impacts a smaller car. The Euro NCAP results cannot be used to predict the outcome of such crashes.

Does this strike you as a balanced way of telling the public that one class of car is up to 30 times safer than another? No, I don’t think so either. What you see there are the inevitable “weasel” words which get written when something has to be said, but the writers really wish they could avoid saying anything at all.

Yes, I know that if we all drove large cars, much of the difference would be eliminated. It’s like if you drive a large 4x4 into a 44 tonne lorry, you’ll likely get squished. But since most cars on the road are smaller than your 4x4, then the chances are that you’ll come off best in any random crash you may have. Only if you buy the smallest car are the dice permanently loaded against you – unless of course, if you hit a motorbike.

Is it politics, or is it someone trying to push low emissions at the expense of safety? I don’t know because no-one is saying, but I think the safety variations in the various car classes should be much more visible.

Tags:

car safety,
4x4 safety,
NCAP

IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

So I’m upstairs in the bathroom trying to unblock a waste-pipe. I’ve cleaned out the S-Bend Trap (Yuk!), and I’ve poked the long metal snakey thing into the pipe to get as far down the system as I can. I put it back together and, lo and behold, the water now runs away gradually, rather than festering in a pool in the basin, like some primordial soup. Sort of OK, but nothing like it was when we built the house.

What I really want is some stuff I bought, and subsequently got rid of, a few years ago, which you had to pour VERY CAREFULLY into the opened pipe, leave it for half an hour, reconnect it all up, turn the tap on, and Yabbadabba-Doo – just like new again. Except, of course, those that look after my every interest in Government have decreed that I am not now to be trusted with these substances. Mind you, it was 96% Sulphuric Acid, so I can perhaps, on this occasion, understand their stance.

But, I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to drink it, wipe it up with my finger or splash water on it to clean up the mess. I have a degree in some sort of Scientific Cleverness, and would take appropriate measures to avoid any personal damage – like getting a guy in to do it for me.

All of which instantly brought me back to my schooldays, and the Chemistry lessons which I so enjoyed. This was in the early 60s when Man, or at least, American Man, was starting the fabulous voyage which would lead to Apollo 11. As someone fascinated by these things, these days you simply can’t imagine the toe curling joy you got from watching the goings on at Cape Canaveral. I read, or more accurately devoured everything I could find on the subject, and one day reading “Flight” Magazine, what did I come across but a description of the propellants used in the American’s new and biggest Rocket, the Titan.

To get away from the problems of having to ensure that the ignition systems in the engines needed to work perfectly every time, the wizzos designing the rockets simply did away with them. They used fuels which were “hypergolic”, which I found out meant “Ignites on impact”. You kept them in two separate tanks in the rocket, and poured them down two separate tubes into the rocket motor whereupon you got the Mother and Father of all controlled explosions, and a couple of seconds later you were in space.

At least, that was the theory.

The recipe for all this was disarmingly simple – 1 bottle of Red Fuming Nitric Acid, and 1 bottle of Unsymmetrical DiMethyl Hydrazine, hereinafter referred to as UDMH. We are now in the days when you did real experiments at school in the Chemistry Labs. You poked around with Phosphorous, you made Chlorine, and smelt it, you got the remarkably unstable element Aluminium glowing red by removing the protective oxide on it. You had Bunsen Burners permanently on, resulting in the great side pleasure of unobtrusively singeing the trousers of classmates you disliked. It was a real joy of discovery.

Then started the Organic Chemistry course. We began with Methane, and Ethane, Alkynes and the like. Incidentally, do you know that making Acetylene is the result of combining Calcium Carbide and Water. So if you feed Calcium Carbide to a pigeon, I have it on goodish authority that the resultant avian explosion is deemed quite impressive (as avian explosions go), if you are a questioning 16 year old with a practical Scientific bent.

Anyway, the course developed. Benzenes came and went, we made soap (Sodium Oleate, Sodium Palmitate and something else I can’t remember anymore) until one day the magic word Hydrazine appeared in the lesson.

Your mind’s probably ahead of me, but we did go through due scientific process here. We started with Bog Standard Vanilla Hydrazine, and thanks to a little prompting and leading from the class (there was a grand total of 6 of us in the form, reducing to 5 if you exclude the form-master) we seemed to get on to Di-Methyl Hydrazine. Well, this was close enough for me. I reckoned, as a rangefinder, I could live without UDMH’s molecular asymmetry to begin with, and the Devil’s Brew to make some was duly set in motion. The lab must have looked a bit like the inside of an Al-Qaeda Bomb cell, but I only made a small quantity (Honestly, Your Honour).

In the meantime, the Red Fuming Nitric Acid had been fuming away, waiting for its moment, in the Fume Cupboard. Except, that is, on one occasion, some other inquisitive bright spark had got it out to play and managed to splash some on his hand, the result of which was an aesthetically rather satisfying, perfectly circular and impressively large crater in his Index Finger.

So later that lesson, when we were being busy little scientists, I decided that I ought to test the substances we had just created. I had literally only a thimbleful of DMH. So a matched quantity of RFNA was poured out, and the two brought near to each other using those quaint twisty things you used in a Fume Cupboard to manipulate the potions from outside the cabinet. They were both in very small glass containers, sitting behind the large glass screens through which we all used to observe the goings on.

I don’t know what would have happened if I had not been standing behind the wooden frame of the Cupboard. I suspect something inside me had done an intuitive and rather rudimentary Risk Assessment on the potential consequences of pouring one of the liquids into the other. From a scientific viewpoint, my immediate conclusion was that it didn’t matter which liquid you poured into which.

Even if I say it myself, the result was really rather impressive. The glass shrapnel reached the other side of the lab, and, as I recall, it was not a particularly small room. Fortunately, no-one was injured, one of the lesser sung educational benefits of small class sizes. The form master, who strangely had been outside the lab when the experiment started (Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?) seemed to reappear with remarkable rapidity.

Oh dear, here we go, I thought. Looking back, the odd thing is it didn’t end up as a major problem. A balanced response from those in charge is the best way of describing it. I got a reasonable and fair bollocking for the explosion, and, as I recall, a grudging but slightly congratulatory pat on the back for the use of a bit of scientific initiative.

As a way of learning, on the job, so to speak, I have to say, it worked brilliantly. I can still remember the details nearly 50 years later, and, in my rather tenuous defence, isn’t that what teaching is all about?

Tags:

school,chemistry,explosions

ASHES TO ASHES, PIER TO PIER

There’s something inherently really rather nice about the Seaside Pier.

Invented, almost inevitably by the Victorians, they reek of a truly English, rather old-fashioned summer holiday. Strolls, or even train-rides, out to sea on a long, wooden slatted platform, deckchairs, theatres (sometimes quite high class ones at that), penny slot machines, Fortune Tellers and Candy Floss. Not a carbon based holiday air mile in sight.

The sight yesterday of the pier at Weston-super-Mare blazing into nothingness is really rather depressing. So many of them seem to have suffered rather violent ends, either from fire, the weather or even the occasional ship ploughing into them. Perhaps it’s Man being told that the land is his province, and the sea is a step too far. Who knows?

If it wasn't so sad, the black humour in you (or at least me) would at least note the comments yesterday from one of the well meaning firemen that they had suffered a shortage of water for the pumps. I'm sure he's right, but I'd have found a different way to say it.

As structures, they are very photogenic, partly because they are such simple, repetitive shapes and partly because they stand visually very strongly against a clean, uncluttered background. I've dug out a couple of pictures I've taken of them in the past.

Firstly Cromer in Norfolk. The pier here is nearly 500 feet long, and forms a beautiful backdrop to our walks on Runton Beach with the dogs in that part of the world. The first picture shows the theatre on the end of the pier, taken as the sun went down.

CROMER PIER AT SUNDOWN

The other was taken on a Saturday night in mid season, with the holidaymakers digging into their fish and chips in one of the shelters on the pier. I have deliberately grained the picture and taken a lot of the detail out of it, to make it look a bit like something from the past – which in a way it is.

FISH'N'CHIPS SEVEN TIMES PLEASE

The last picture, below, was taken at Morecambe in Lancashire about 15 years ago. I think the pier had been destroyed (here we go again) by fire, and the structure stood bent, twisted and destroyed against the horizon. As a metaphor for the town, which in the early Nineties definitely seemed to be on its way out as a seaside resort, it takes some beating. The town faces west, so the sun sets very invitingly against the stark structure of the pier’s remains. All you need is a gentle, misty sunset with the brightness of the sun dampened down into a lovely redness against the grey sea and sky, and the contrast of a black metal silhouette, and the result is a picture I’m quite pleased with.

Simplicity is all.

SUNSET - MORECAMBE PIER

Tags:piers,
photographs,
morecambe,
cromer

"UP TO 6" FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST

I copied the following article out of the “Daily Telegraph” today. Well, you had to with a Headline like the one in Bold Blue below. So many thoughts go through your head that I don’t know where to start.

So I won’t.

Except to wonder whether the Westminster equivalent of the UK’s illegal Immigrant problem has already reached epidemic proportions, and this is the Government’s way of shutting the stable door long after the horse in question has bolted.

And anyway, if 27% of the Cabinet has also suffered in this way, that means there'a around 6 of them. Any ideas who they might be? I can think of a couple of racing certs.

Lovely.

'Idiots and lunatics' may be given right to stand for Parliament
By Joanna Corrigan

Last Updated: 12:57AM BST 21/07/2008

People labelled "idiots" and "lunatics" under archaic mental health laws could soon be allowed to stand for Parliament.

Ministers are considering scrapping ancient rules after complaints from mental health campaigners that they are discriminatory.

Laws created in Elizabethan times define idiots as "incapable of gaining reason" and lunatics as capable of only periods of lucidity.

They are banned from becoming MPs "in their non lucid intervals".

The ancient laws also ban anyone sectioned under the Mental Health Act from putting themselves forward for election, even if they have fully recovered, and require MPs to give up their seat for life if they are sectioned for six months.

A spokesman for Mind, the mental health charity, said it was wrong to rule out people that have suffered in the past but are still extremely capable.

"People who have suffered mental health problems can function at a very high level. Look at Stephen Fry. He has been open about his manic depression and people would be shocked if someone like him were not eligible to stand," he said.

A recent survey of MPs found 27 per cent had suffered some kind of mental health problem.

One in three said the stigma attached to that type of illness had prevented them being open about it.

WHO'D BE A TEST CRICKET UMPIRE?

With the march of new technology, the difficulty of the job of umpiring a Test Match has taken a quantum leap upwards. Time and time again, we see the umpire’s decision dissected by the commentators, using hindsight, “Hawk-Eye”, a committee review, “Snicko”, continuously repeated backwards and forwards Slow Motion camera work using up to 26 camera around a ground, to decide on the rights and wrongs of a decision. They use all this paraphanalia and some few minutes later, a puff of technological “White Smoke” appears and the pundits deliver their verdict. If it confirms the umpire’s decision, well he was only doing his job properly wasn’t he, and if he’s wrong, then there’s another small nail in the integrity of the umpire’s position. Occasionally, they then replay the offending moment in real time, and you hardly have time to see anything – you then realise just what a difficult job making a decision actually is.

Now, the Rules of Cricket are quite clear, and it is one of the more charming parts of the game – on the field, the Umpires have the final responsibility for the interpretation of the Rules and all the decisions which flow from that. It doesn’t say they have to be right, just “in their opinion …….”. They get it right most times, but, being human, they sometimes get it wrong. But whether it is intended or otherwise, this “God-like” power and position of the Umpire is under increasing threat from these reviews. And surely, it doesn’t need to be like that.

Umpires make mistakes – they always have, and they always will. The game is played on this basis. As a batsman, at least if you’re my age, you “walk” if the Umpire’s finger goes up – even if you know you are not out (think Gilchrist here, bless him). Others (think Atherton here) take the view that, if the umpire has the final say, then they’d better stay there at the crease, even though they know they’re out, just to balance the times when the umpire gets it wrong – law of averages, and all that.

Now it is fair to say that the technology is here to stay, and it will only become more sophisticated as time passes. Which means that burying one’s head in the technological sand is not going to work. And this is the issue. For time immemorial, there was no real way to determine the accuracy of the umpire’s decisions, so everything goes down in history as undisputed fact. When Len Hutton scored 364 Not Out in 1938 (Did you know, by the way he was only 22 when he played that innings?), there was no Hawkeye then to show whether Fred Smith actually got a snick off him when he was on 24.

Today, it’s utterly different. The almost obscene avalanche of money rushing towards the sport will magnify the potential impact of this issue to be even more important than it is today. Just imagine the issues of the two catches (Did they, or did they not, touch the ground?) which enlivened the South Africa Test a couple of days ago, if something similar happened in the Stanford Match later this year. Ambassadors would be withdrawn, and UN ressolutions would be called for. You just know that something’s got to give, and give soon.

The argument today seems to hinge on the balance of Ultimate Umpire Power vs Technological confirmation and accuracy of a decision. To me the situation is basically simple. The Umpire should retain his ultimate authority in spite of the existence and use of all these technical aids. It is one of the real charms of the game, that the final decision rests on the shoulders of one man. But surely, we should use the aids we have today to improve the accuracy of the decisions, subject always to the Umpire’s final say-so.

I’m still not sure about the referral process. It allows the players to be able to put increased pressure on the umpire. Yes, it gets a disputed decision revisited, but it is the thin end of a very large wedge in the destruction of the Umpire’s power on the field. So, why not use the technology? If the umpire doesn’t, the Sky TV Director will.

If the umpire is quite sure in his mind about a decision, then let him call it without the gizmos. He can then take the flak if he’s proven to be wrong.If he isn’t sure, then let him call up the same technology that the commentating pundits spray around after every difficult decision. He can then make his decision after seeing what he wants, and he then retains his authority on the field.

You will still get decisions where not everyone agrees – but so what? Two days ago, Michael Vaughan “caught” a ball very low down off Hashim Amla. In real time, it looked for all the world, as if it was out. Vaughan clearly thought he’d caught it, Amla walked immediately, the umpire didn’t stop him, and everyone was convinced the catch was good. When the replay came up on the screen, the South African dressing room (and yours truly as well, watching on the box) said “Hang on a minute, did it touch the ground?”, and chaos ensued.

The next morning, with all their own experience, all the time in the world and all the technology available behind them, the commentators still could not agree whether the catch was good or not. It was a 2-1 split, and this was David Gower, Michael Holding and David Lloyd we’re talking about here, not Ant and Dec.

We seem to be aiming for 100% perfection for any change, when that is never going to happen. And because we can’t get it, we won’t take the simple steps forward which seem all too obvious – the ones which will get us from 70% to 90%. Maybe you say it’s sport to have these controversies, but I’m not so sure. Think World Cup 1966, think “The Hand of God”, think the World Cup England Rugby game recently.

Surely what we need is a simple mechanism which allows the unfortunate “obvious” errors which we see all the time in the game to be prevented. In the Test series so far, to my knowledge, Cook was given out wrongly to a ball which touched his trousers, not his glove, Strauss was sent packing quite incorrectly and Collingwood suffered the same fate. Two seconds watching a replay by any of the umpires would, I submit, have reversed those decisions, and avoided the umpires’ red faces, and who then knows how the match would have changed.

Collingwood, fighting for his place in the team needed a good innings, and through no fault of his own, didn’t get a chance to play one. He was dropped for the next match, when a decent score may just possibly have resulted in a different decision. It can’t be right if a wrong umpiring decision could lose a player his place in the team. Just think if Strauss had got a wrong’un in his survival innings recently in New Zealand. No-one could have guaranteed on that day that he would go on to play a matchwinning innings, and we’d almost certainly have a new opening bat for England now. It’s that important.

But the Umpire’s job is hugely difficult, and increasingly so. Think of what he has to do. You’ve got Brett Lee blasting down towards you behind your left shoulder to bowl – at something like 90 miles/hour. Each and every ball, the Umpire must check that the bowler’s front foot does not overstep the crease creating a No Ball. He then has to look up, focus on the ball, measure where it lands, compute its line and height and the amount of swing and bounce in case it hits the batsman’s pads, decide whether the ball hits the bat at all, or just before or just after the pad, and decide whether the ball would have hit the stumps, in three dimensions.

Now, a simple bit of maths. Assuming the ball lands “on a length”, at 90 mph, the umpire has around 0.12 seconds to adjust and pick all this up from the time he’s also looking at the bowler’s front foot and trying to decide where it hits the ground. The minimum reaction time for a Human Being estimated by the clever souls who study Athletics sprinting, is around 0.11 seconds. Indeed, if an athlete is found to have started off the blocks in less time than this, he is deemed to have jumped the start, because a faster reaction is physiologically impossible. So why do we expect a 50 year old Cricket umpire to hit that sweet spot 270 times a day in a cricket match, when the time allowed is on the limit of the physically possible?

Answer – because we do. But we don’t have to. Why don’t we aim one of these machines at the crease and leave it to the machine to bleep if the bowler oversteps the mark. That strikes me as simple. You get an accurate answer every time, you get it immediately and the umpire is released to concentrate on the other end of the pitch, where the action is going to take place.

And why can an on-the-pitch umpire refer some decisions to the Third Umpire and not others? And some to the Square Leg umpire, and not others?

This gets hugely complicated quite quickly. So why not start with the basics?

1 - Technology is here to stay.

2 - Clearly visible errors quickly erode the Umpire’s credibility.

3 - The amount of money in the game is making and is going to continue to make umpiring decisions increasingly more important.

4 - The position of authority of the Umpire must be bolstered and supported where it can.

5 - We live in a world where it is naïve (See 3 above – money doesn’t talk, it shouts) to think we can rely unreservedly on the word of the players – morals and integrity are not absolute things and money can easily be seen as the lubricant of the devil here. Anyone been to a Soccer match recently?

So, start there and let the umpire, not the teams, have access to the gizmos Sky and its commentators use. Let the umpires choose when they are unsure, as they can, and do today with run-outs, to have access to the technology being used currently to judge them.

Insist that decisions on No Balls are given to a line judge machine. I’m sure they must exist - if not, go to Wimbledon and ask them.

Umpires are not idiots, and none of them want to look a fool. You have to believe that every one of them is trying to do the best job he can. Yes, it will make a few pauses in the game to go through these replays, but measure the time lost when the current disputes take place on the field, as well as the unnecessary controversy which then fizzes around for days/weeks and sometimes for ever, and off-set that against it. The umpires will use it when they are in doubt – but leave the final decision on Out/Not Out to them.

If they have the choice, and they don’t use it when they should, and consistently get it wrong, then sack them. They’ve had their chance, and in the same way that poor play gets you dropped, they should lose their place if they then don’t make reasonable decisions. What isn’t fair is to berate and demean them when they are being judged by processes far more revealing than they themselves can use.

Simple really.

Tags:

cricket,umpires

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME No. 29

Wells-next-the-Sea is a delightful, and delightfully named small town in Norfolk. Of course, being Norfolk, it isn't next to the sea. When it was named a few hundred years ago, it was, but a couple of centuries of silting up the coast put paid to that, and you now have to drive a mile or so out of the town to paddle in the water.

All of which is nothing to do with this.

As you drive round the town's ring road, you see the local Fire Station - pictured below.

THE FIRE STATION IN WELLS

When you reach the end of the road to drive out of the town, 50 yards further on, you come across the name of the street in which the Fire Station is situated - pictured below.

THIS IS WHERE THE FIRE STATION IS

A bit of history perhaps? Or a bit of Norfolk Black Humour?

Tags:norfolk,street names

THE DAY OF THE TRYFIDS - NORFOLK STYLE

WELL, IT IS NORFOLK - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

A few weeks ago, I showed some pictures of a Scarecrow festival in a small village called Wighton in North Norfolk. The village seemed to have been taken over by them, and I thought a few more should receive a little belated publicity.

Could this happen anywhere else in the world?

GREG NORMAN AND CHRIS EVERT TAKING TEA

GRANNY IN THE GARDEN - AT LEAST, I THINK IT'S A SCARECROW

THIS ONE'S GOT TO BE SHERYL CROW

IN THE STOCKS

ONE OF THEM SEEMS TO BE LEGLESS

DOES THIS ONE REMIND YOU OF ANYONE?

CHAV CROW

OUTSIDE THE PUB

Tags:

wighton,scarecrow festival,norfolk

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME No. 28

I remember this from about 30 years ago. Some wag had painted it on a bridge on the M3 or M4, coming into London. On a Monday morning as I recall, just to give it added flavour.

JACQUES LOUSSIER - 73 YEARS YOUNG

One of life’s great pleasures tonight.

I’m a great fan of jazz/classical pianist Jacques Loussier. He has been playing his own interpretation of Bach for something over 40 years now, and in the last couple of decades he has added additional music from such composers as Ravel, Satie, Vivaldi and a raft of other Baroque composers.

In a world of look-alikes and wannabees, he is simply unique – a technically extremely competent classical pianist and composer, with a jazz overlay to his playing that puts Bach, especially, into a different perspective for me. I first saw him with his trio in London at the Royal Albert Hall in around 1965, some 40 odd years ago, listening for about 3 shillings and sixpence (Sixteen pence, or 25 cents if you think in US Dollars) up in The Gods, right on the top tier of the hall. That was before they fitted the sound absorbing "Flying Saucers" in the roof to sort the acoustics out, and I had the privilege of hearing the concert twice for my money - the second performance following about a third of a second after the first!

He blew me away then, and I’ve listened to his playing ever since. Whenever he plays at a venue anywhere near me, I pile in for my 5 yearly fix. I must have seen him almost 10 times since that time, and tonight he turned up in Shrewsbury with his trio, and off I went to hear him.

THE MAN HIMSELF

He’s 73 now, and the lithe energetic man with a sharply trimmed beard I saw 40 odd years ago is now a greying, more circumspect character. He talks very quietly to the audience and when he plays at the keyboard, his body hardly moves, although his eyes twinkle and his hands are still a blur on the keys. A number of the music snobs think he dumbs down the music, but in reality he brings a unique freshness and a buzz to everything he plays.

He is supported by a couple of absolutely top class musicians. His drummer, Andre Arpino, has a delicate and stunning touch which is unerring, rock solid, very inventive and a joy to watch and listen to. Anyone who thinks drumming is a Four in the Bar accompaniment, should listen to Arpino. He has an amazing sense of light and shade, offering a perfect support to Loussier’s piano lines, as well as showing a prodigious skill when he takes off on his own.

THE JACQUES LOUSSIER TRIO

The bass player rejoices under the glorious name of Benoit Dunoyer de Segonzac which sounds like a very expensive Premier Cru Claret. A long, lanky guy with closed cropped hair and enormously long fingers, he hangs on and around his instrument, as if it’s part of him. If the idea of listening to a lengthy, meandering Double Bass solo does not turn you on, you should listen to this guy. He struck off into a solo which lasted for ever and the several hundred people crammed into the Shrewsbury Music Hall, to a man, were totally riveted and struck quite dumb by it all – not a single cough or noise – for its 6-7 minute duration.

He stroked it, caressed it, hit it, played huge booming, ringing bass notes, followed by almost guitar like soprano sounds with him hunched over the body of the instrument with his head bent over almost touching the sound board. He slid sinuously up and down the strings making it sound on occasions like a dark slide guitar, and then rebuilt the melody in a sequence of deep triple chords which made you wonder how his fingers ever reached all the notes simultaneously. It was an absolute tour-de-force. I thought it was breathtaking.

LOUSSIER AND DRUMMER ARPINO SIGNING CDs AND DVDs AFTERWARDS

He last visited the Music Hall in Shrewsbury 3½years ago, on his 70th Birthday, when the town presented him with a large Birthday cake. By then, he'd played something over 3,000 concerts, and he still made it all sound as fresh as a daisy. You hope he goes on for ever so I’m mentally slotting myself in to see him again in early 2012 when he’s 77.

À bientôt.

Tags:

jacques loussier,
shrewsbury,jazz,
bach

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME No. 27

I've driven past this road sign umpteen times on the way to work, but the cricketingness in it only clicked with me today.

I suppose you woudn't believe me if I said the next street along was named "Jonty Road".

Or "Brian Close"?

Thought so.

Tags:

cricket,humour

LLANGOLLEN CANAL - TEN YEARS AGO

It always amazes me how one simple image can set the mind racing to drag back something which I had forgotten. My friend Chris, who writes a very erudite Blog on Things Computorial (enigmatically titled http://chris-linfoot.net/ – read the entry for 22nd June), a small proportion of which I can actually understand, put up an image the other day which he had taken on a holiday recently. He had been with his family in North Wales, and the picture below jumped out at me.

CHRIS'S IMAGE OF THE SNAPPILY NAMED "PONTCYSYLLTE AQUEDUCT"

It is of an aqueduct which carries the Llangollen Canal over the River Dee, and shows a boat crossing it. This is no ordinary bridge – it’s a Grade 1 Listed Structure and is currently up for consideration for World Heritage Status. It is one of the very first in the world to have been constructed from cast iron, and was built by Thomas Telford in 1805. Many people, apparently were sceptical when they first saw the delicacy of the design, but good old Telford believed in his sums, and went ahead. £47,000 later, the structure, which stands 126 feet above the river, and is over 1000 feet long, came into service, and on the basis that it’s still there 202 years later, I suppose you couldn’t blame Telford for waving two fingers at his detractors.

Ten years ago, almost to the day, we went on a short canal boat holiday along the self same canal. For reasons I can’t explain, it was also (to date) our last. We picked the boat up a few hundred yards before the bridge, which is actually the second of two aqueducts in close proximity, and got our comprehensive instructions from the Welshman at the boatyard. “Push this to go forward, pull this to go backwards, and pass on the left” was about it as I remember. No mention of the bridge, bless him.

THE BOAT-YARD

It was a windy but bright day, so we gave the throttle a shove and took off. It handled like a three wheeled supermarket trolley – all over the place, and we zig-zagged our way rather drunkenly into the main channel, which was not that wide. Because the canal is built in the hills of Wales, it twists and turns to make some effort to keep on the level round the bases of the hills – very beautiful, but I could have done with a nice straight bit to get the hang of the oversteer.

TELL ME YOU DON'T LIKE THAT!

Over one aqueduct which was quite sheltered, and you thought “This is not as difficult as people say”. A sharp right turn, and you start out on this second monster. Now the laws of hydrodynamics tell you that when you force something through a narrow water channel, because you have to move the water in front of you through the gap between you and the side, the drag of the boat increases. Well, I did have a degree in Theoretical Aerodynamics, so nodding sagely to myself, I shoved the throttle forward a bit to counteract this extra resistance.

As we got onto bridge proper, the wind started to increase, and the resistance increased, and I pushed the throttle forward – and we very gradually started to slow down. More throttle, more wind, result - less speed. By about the middle of the bridge, the throttle was wide open, the wind was blowing a gale, and we elegantly came gradually to a stop, and started to move very majestically backwards.

Now when young Mr Telford built his bridge, he’d clearly got some miserable Finance Man working with him, because they decided to put a walkway on one side, with a guardrail on it. However, on the other side, they stopped the vertical side of the iron channel just over the top of the water level, and, although they put holes in to fit a guard-rail on this side, they never bothered to fit it. So, there we were, 126 feet up in the air, and if you took one pace to the left, after about 6 or 7 somersaults with pike, you spread yourself over a not inconsiderable area of the valley below. Mmmmm.

So, with yours truly as Manager, two members of the crew, to whit, one Wife, and one Son-in Law, (Yes, I know what you’re going to say) were dispatched to act as dray-horses, and add a further 2 horsepower to the engine. We slowly crept across the bridge, and after a further 500 feet reached the other side – knackered. Well, they were.

A HELPING HAND OR TWO

Welcome to Wales!

The rest of the holiday was, to coin a phrase, plain sailing. Watching the world go past at 4 miles per hour, walking along the tow-path with the only dog in the world which got sea-sick on a canal, and stopping in the various pubs alongside the canal bank for sustenance, both solid and liquid – there are many, many worse ways to spend three days.

STEADY AS SHE GOES

Going back when we neared the aqueduct, the thought entered our heads “Here we go again”, but, of course the wind was behind us and we shot across the bridge like a rocket.

RETURN JOURNEY, JUST LOOK AT THE SIDE OF THE CHANNEL!

I have to say, in all the kerfuffle, I think I forgot to make any comment to the poor sods in the boat waiting at the other end – anyway I think they were Welsh!

Tags:

pontcysyllte,
canal,
aqueduct,llangollen canal

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME No. 26

I don't know if the grilles over the windows are to keep the burglars out, or keep the customers in.

And I'm not going to find out.

Tags:

humour,hairdressers

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME No. 25

For the record, this was taken on June 18th.

Tags:

shrewsbury,humour

IF THE ANSWER'S "42", WHAT'S THE QUESTION?

I haven’t written much about the political goings on in this country of ours for some time – it’s just too depressing. But today, Our Glorious Leader is forcing Parliament to vote on a plan which allows the police to hold terror suspects for 42 days, rather than the current level of 28. You can argue until the cows come home about which branch of maths leads Those in Charge to decide on the number 42 – my own theory is that Gordon has read one too many Douglas Adams books.

But that’s completely beside the point.

The issue is whether we need an extension to what is already a draconian power available to this Government. We have existed since time immemorial as a nation on the basis that we all, as individuals, enjoy as much freedom as possible. Now, people will argue that that statement is the moral equivalent to the perceived length of a short piece of string – it means different things to different people. But, if you want to see what it actually means in real life, there are enough countries around the world where you can see what the alternatives are, and where most of us would very much NOT like to live. And I for one simply don’t want it here.

Sitting listening to the birds singing away this morning in sunny Shropshire, it seems so clear that the case for such an arbitrary extension is simply not there – it’s just someone’s whim. Someone whose political life is currently in freefall. Having published the draft legislation he finds himself faced with a backlash from all sides in Parliament, so what do we see? The gradual watering down of a proposed piece of legislation, with sops of modifications, obfuscations, ifs and buts, which all but destroy the principle he was setting out to achieve in the first place.

We get David Blunkett, whose stint as Home Secretary shone out as a textbook study in bullying incompetence, writing in “The Times” yesterday to support his boss, and justify the magic number of 42. His reason to increase the current position by 50% is that “in three cases, we have come close to needing every one of the 28 days currently permitted for pre-charge detention….. “. What kind of logic is that? It’s spin gone mad.

As one short letter in today’s newspaper replies, what Blunkett really meant was “.. a) in no case have the police needed to hold a suspect for the full 28 days; b) in only 3 cases did they come close to 28 days; c) in all other cases they needed nowhere near 28 days.”. If that’s the basis on which our fundamental individual rights get irrevocably removed, then it’s not just the State of Denmark where there’s something wrong.

We have here a government hell bent on removing another of our rights, based on a totally flawed logic, cravenly seeking political support by then watering the principle down just far enough to get a majority of 1, and then using second rate ex-politicians to try and justify the unjustifiable.

This “Try this for size, and if you don’t like it, I’ll change it” government style is quite odious. If they have principles, then let them fight for them. That’s what Government is about. It’s not meant to be liked. My dictionary defines it as “to rule with authority”, not “What do you think of this idea?”

We’ve seen it with the "10p in the Pound" Tax change recently, where, just because a piece of (one assumes) well thought out legislation did not find favour with the electorate just as it was about to be introduced, they borrowed another £2.7 Billion to get round it and dig themselves out of a totally self created political hole. To Hell with the Economy, it's my seat in Parliament that's really important.

I’m not sure you can have a moral cess-pit, but if you can, I know where to find one.

Tags:

politics,gordon brown,42 days

PROVENCE - PONT DU GARD

Around twenty five years ago, we went two or three times en famille to Provence for our annual holiday. It was a marvellous place to spend a couple of weeks each summer – the light, the views, the food, the people, the wine, the markets and a very relaxed way of life ….. and … and. It was no surprise over the next few years to see the semi mass migration of British people wanting to set up a second home there, or just live there permanently. For reasons I can’t explain, it has taken me until May 2008 to return.

One of the unique aspects about the place is the number and the quality of their Roman antiquities. You can’t call them ruins because in most cases, they aren’t ruined. Within a thirty or so mile radius of where we were staying, you could visit Arles, Nimes, Orange, Vaison la Romaine, Les Baux and be transported back two thousand years in an instant. You can walk inside them, outside them, underneath them, and on top of them. They are real world treasures, not screened off, to be admired from afar.

When, around the birth of Christ, Rome decided to flex its muscles and invade/educate (Delete as applicable) the Western World, the first place they annexed was Provence. The name says it all – “Provincia” in Latin means The Province. They took, among other things, their civilisation, their sense of structure and order, their vineyards, and their buildings – Oh and the Aqueduct. For further information on this, please see “The Life of Brian”. The buildings and the vineyards are still there.

Many of the Roman structures leave you impressed, but there are a select few which make you absolutely gasp. “How on earth did they do that?” will be on most people’s lips when they see the theatre at Orange, or the Arena at Nimes. But the one that does it for me is an aqueduct which bridges the River Gard, and was built around 1900 years ago to carry water to Nimes – the Pont du Gard. It’s a simple piece of utilitarian construction – but one which to my untutored eyes is quite beautiful. It performed a simple but vital function, and the Romans constructed something that simply “does exactly what it says on the tin”, but in Latin, of course. I haven’t actually set to and measured it, but I’ll bet that if you match Golden Sections and Fibonacci numbers to it, you would come up with some things of interest. It sits so perfectly in the landscape.

IS THAT, OR IS THAT NOT, A FANTASTIC SIGHT?

UNDERNEATH THE ARCHES

The other thing that strikes you immediately when you first see it, is its size. The top of the aqueduct is 165 feet above the river – that’s the height of Nelson’s column. It’s around 900 feet long, and the blocks from which it’s made weigh up to 6 tons each. The thing that clinches it for me is that there is no mortar between the stones – and it doesn’t leak!.

We’d have more than a little difficulty doing that today.

I approached it a few days ago with tons of anticipation. The last time we were here, we wandered around it at river level, and then took ourselves off to the top, where we walked along the massive stones which cover the water channel, gazing down 160 odd feet over the (non guard railed!!!) side onto the river a very long way below. The picture shows what it was like in 1985. Masses of people there, picnics in full flow, children waving their legs over the edge, and no-one worrying a great deal.

TAKEN IN 1985 - I'D LOOK WHERE I WAS GOING IF I WERE YOU

When you got to the centre, the stones covering the water in the aqueduct were missing, leaving the centre section as two vertical stone side walls, each around 2 feet wide, with the water course separating them. If you wanted to get to the other side, you simply walked across the top of one of the walls, and “Bob’s your Uncle”. Simple really. My daughter, who was 12 at the time, and I did just that, because, in 1985, it seemed the natural thing to do. We remember remarking at the time how refreshing this was. In England, the whole thing would either be cordoned off, or there would be guard rails and notices everywhere, and we said then how good it was that the French took a much more laid back approach to it all.

In 2008 however, in the words of the Romans, “Tempus” has very much “Fugitted”.

It’s still an awesome structure, and there are still no guardrails there, for the simple reason that you are not allowed anywhere above the base level without a guide. And then only, I think, inside the aqueduct, where you can’t fall off. I don’t know why I found this so depressing, that the Men in Grey Suits had managed to withdraw this avenue of pleasure for today’s world. I suppose I am looking at it a little through Rose coloured spectacles. I’m sure there must have been a few cases of Pierre giving his irritating little brother Lucien a push just a tad harder that was strictly necessary, resulting in an immediate and rather messy reduction in the number of family mouths to feed. But, it still left me thinking that if it’s got to the French, then there’s no hope.

PICNIC BY THE RIVER

WALKING ACROSS FOR CISSIES ON THE LOWEST LEVEL - FALL OFF HERE AND YOU ONLY BREAK A COUPLE OF LEGS

So, for the average visitor, you get a huge crick in your neck as you stare vertically upwards. It’s still one hell of a sight, imposing and majestic, and something you don’t forget in a long time.

Tags:

provence,pont du gard,health and safety

PROVENCE - MONT VENTOUX

Mont Ventoux is only 6,300 feet high, which as French mountains go is nothing special. But, and it's a big But, it sits on its own away from any other mountain of any size. And much of the surrounding area of Provence from which you see it, is near ground level. So, instead of seeing an immense mountain from the slopes of one nearly as big, most of the views of Ventoux make it look huge.

MONT VENTOUX, WITH THE SUNRISE HITTING THE SUMMIT

As you meander around just about anywhere in the Rhone Valley, and you look east, you can't avoid it - it dominates the horizon with its brooding size ever present. Rather than just admire it for what it is, the French have built a radar station and a television mast on the very top, and you can see these from tens of miles around. It is a truly majestic mountain.

Bless them, with the scientific stations at the top came two roads, one going up the north side of the mountain to the very top and the other coming down the south side. From the top, on a clear day, you can see both the Pyrenees and the Alps.

"Vent" in French means "wind", and the mountain is extremely well named. Wind speeds nearing 200 mph have been measured there. Up to about 1600 metres, the ground is covered with an assortment of Provençale trees, but as you continue to climb, the trees disappear, and you quickly find yourself in a very alien landscape. Huge, huge areas of unremitting limestone shale and shingle are the only things surrounding you. You drive relentlessly upwards on a Long and Winding Road, marked by poles to guide you through the winter snows. In the distance you can see the scientific stations at the summit, which in themselves look like a huge Saturn Rocket next to an enormous Golf ball. But there's nothing else. It's like being on the Moon.

LIKE BEING ON THE MOON

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD - 1

Being in the South of France, the French passion for cycling is not far away, so it has been the location of some of the most iconic cycle races ever in the Tour de France. Every few years, one of the mountain stages of that gruelling event involves the climb of the mountain, usually in the fierce 95 degree heat of a July afternoon. As a recipe for sorting cycling men from boys, it has few peers, and everyone with an interest in cycling looks forward intently when the Tour passes through.

The main part of the climb stretches over nearly 22 kilometres, during which the riders climbs over 1,600 metres, nearly 5,000 feet. As you reach the top, with the tree line's protection from the wind and the heat having died away, the gradient, rather nastily, gradually increases. The last kilometre is a constant 1 in 10.

A friend of mine, who considers himself to be of a good "county" standard as a cyclist, set off a few years ago on a pilgrimage to climb it, and was pleased to get to the top in around 3 hours. The current professional record is just under 56 minutes!

Such a test stretches them to the limit – and sometimes beyond. Half a mile from the summit, you come across a small memorial to Tom Simpson, a great British cyclist who, in 1967, due to a combination of drugs, alcohol, heat, illness and unbelievable determination rode himself to a total standstill there - and fell over. His last words were "Put me back on my bike", which they did, and he died still clipped into his pedals. The small monument is very moving, always with a permanent collection of souvenirs and memorabilia surrounding it. A desolate place indeed.

TOM SIMPSON'S MEMORIAL, WITH THE SUMMIT IN THE BACKGROUND

IT SAYS "THEY NEVER LEARN 1967-2007" ... AND IT'S IN ENGLISH

I drove up very early one morning, just after sunrise in late May. Expecting the glorious Provencal weather later that day, I ventured out in shorts and a thin T-shirt to take my pictures. Thank Goodness, there was no-one on the mountain to see my antics as I drove up. Towards the top, I had the car heater full-on, and I sat in the car between shots to unfreeze myself, just before rushing outside to get each picture. It was blowing nearly a gale, and the temperature was 2 degrees. Quite why I'd left my brain so far below me in the valley, I don't know.

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD - 2

It was about 7am as I rolled over the top, and started to descend the other side. About 50 metres from the summit, a speck in the distance appeared, looking just like the French equivalent of Omar Sharif's amazing entrance in "Lawrence of Arabia". Except, he was on a bike, not a camel. He pedalled, frighteningly quickly I thought, up towards me, wearing the condom like top and shorts beloved by most keen cyclists. In the howling wind, and zero degree temperature, he passed me at a fair old lick, with a cheery "Bonjour Monsieur". I just stood there clapping him, quite astonished.

"BONJOUR MONSIEUR" - AND NOT EVEN BREATHING HARD

NOW THESE TWO WERE STRUGGLING - AND THEY'D ONLY JUST STARTED!

Just to prove that the French can be as mad as anyone else, once a year, there is a competition for amateur riders, where you have to ride up the mountain as many times as possible in 24 hours. The record is 11 ascents!!!

But going down can be just as dangerous. In a car, you can go the whole way without engaging a gear – I know because I've done it. You get great fuel consumption, but the brakes end up glowing Cherry Red! This time, part of the way down, I stopped to take a few pictures of the flowers at the side of the road, only to hear a sudden explosive whoosh behind me. If I had stepped back 3 inches at that precise moment, there would have been two dead people on the mountain that morning, and you would have been looking for something else to read at this moment. He must have been doing 60 mph.

I can read the ad on e-bay now – "Unexpectedly for sale - D300 camera – light use only. Slight scuff marks to body. Residual blood stains and minor tarmac indentations are a little unsightly but do not affect operation of camera."

After all, it is a Nikon.

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provence,mont ventoux,tom simpson,tour de france