Sunday, October 07, 2012
Horton Lane (clockwise) musings
On this occasion, on the various flavours of danger, which I allowed two dimensions. Dimension 1 was the chance of being badly damaged, if one was being picky maybe in the form of a probability distribution. The distribution would tell you what chance there was of damage of some specified severity in some specified interval. Dimension 2 was the length of the period over which one was expected to accept this risk. The rather obvious thought being that it gets harder to accept any particular risk as the length of the period increases - but there are some rather less obvious ramifications.
So Russian Roulette not too bad because the period is short. One just cranks oneself up (as it were), hopes for the best and pulls the trigger. Bungy jumping a bit harder because the actual act takes a bit longer: the weighing in, the climbing up onto the platform, the strapping on of the harness and finally giving the nod to the chap pulling the lever. Infantryman in the trenches in the first war or bomber crew in the second very hard because one had to accept a high level of risk (and stay functional) over long periods. Rather worse, perhaps, than an infantryman in say, Marlborough's time, when battles were few and far between and rarely lasted more than a few hours.
Then one has the climbers, like the one I read about recently who have to contain fear for perhaps a small number of days at a time (see August 3rd). Then the pioneers on the route to the South Pole who accept a rather lower level of risk but have to carry that risk for months at a time.
All brought on by coming across the autobiography of Sir Francis Chichester in the local library. Spotted quite by chance but picked up, in part anyway, because of our visit to his ancestral hall in North Devon (see August 26th). At least I think he is a junior twig on the family tree concerned. Hitherto, I have vaguely thought of him as being a yachtsman who took one trip too many and had to be winched off, more or less to die.
But having read his book he now strikes me as a much more substantial person - although quite possibly a hard person to be around for any length of time. So he goes off to New Zealand as a young man with hardly a bean after the first world war and makes a lot of money. He then goes back to England, gets a bee in his bonnet about flying and decides to fly back to Australia single handed, something which had been done just once or twice before. This takes a couple of months or so. Lots of opportunities for getting lost, forced landings in the middle of nowhere, robbery with or without violence. Very tired for a lot of the time. Sometimes hard to stay awake in the air. Lots of repairs needed along the way, repairs requiring a good range of engineering and carpentry skills. Not to mention band-aid patches on the thin fabric which covered the wings. At one point, just having survived yet another brush with death, he just gets out a cigar, puffs up, pours himself a large brandy and flies along as happy as can be.
On arrival, takes himself and plane to New Zealand on a boat and then wants to fly back to England, starting with a flight across the Tasman Sea to Australia, maybe half as far as going across the North Atlantic and three times as far as his plane, now converted to a seaplane by the adding of floats, can fly on one tank. But all is not lost. He spots a couple of small islands, one at the one third and the other at the two thirds mark. The only catch being that they are quite small islands, quite easy to miss - with missing being almost certainly fatal. But he gets himself a sextant and works out some tricky way of reducing the risk of missing - the catch being that one has to take the sights (having waited for the sun to come out) and do the complicated sounding calculations with one hand while flying the plane with the other. I had always been rather impressed that Captain Scott & Co. could keep up this sort of thing while dying of cold, but this sounds even harder. But this one managed.
On from Australia up through the East Indies etc, crashing while doing an exhibition flight in Japan. A crash into wires stretched between two mountain peaks which no-one had thought to tell him about and which were more or less invisible from the air. Reduced to taking the steamer home.
Back in England, he spent most of the war years teaching navigation in the RAF, rather miffed that he was not allowed a navigator wing on his tunic as he wore spectacles. This meant that he had little cred. in fly-boy bars, which he thought was rather unfair, all things considered. Then back to making money, starting with navigation board games, then jigsaw maps, then paper maps, then the Chichester Guide to London to which we were introduced by a helpful City of London policeman in the late seventies. Very good little guide it was too, much better than an AZ for central London, but sadly it does not appear to exist any more. At least not in Amazon, which knows all about it but has not got one.
He then takes up yachting and, without too much relevant experience, joins the single handed race across the Atlantic, which he wins in 40 days or so. But 40 days without much sleep and with much wrestling with a boat which sounds much too big for handling single handed. Chances of being brained by the main boom or speared by the spinnaker pole much too high. Not to mention sails being carried away, monstrous seas & winds, the possibility of icebergs and a brand new automatic steering gadget (developed from models on the round pond in the Kensington Gardens) needing plenty of running repairs to keep it on automatic.
Still game, a couple of years later he has another go, this time racing against the clock rather than against other yachts, and manages to clip a few days off his previous time. Arriving on Independence Day, which earned him a nice telegram from President Kennedy.
It seems that part of the attraction is that, away from people, one starts to experience a strange & exhilarating oneness with one's boat and with the sea. A very bubble full thing, entirely appropriate for the era of flower people and LSD!
So Russian Roulette not too bad because the period is short. One just cranks oneself up (as it were), hopes for the best and pulls the trigger. Bungy jumping a bit harder because the actual act takes a bit longer: the weighing in, the climbing up onto the platform, the strapping on of the harness and finally giving the nod to the chap pulling the lever. Infantryman in the trenches in the first war or bomber crew in the second very hard because one had to accept a high level of risk (and stay functional) over long periods. Rather worse, perhaps, than an infantryman in say, Marlborough's time, when battles were few and far between and rarely lasted more than a few hours.
Then one has the climbers, like the one I read about recently who have to contain fear for perhaps a small number of days at a time (see August 3rd). Then the pioneers on the route to the South Pole who accept a rather lower level of risk but have to carry that risk for months at a time.
All brought on by coming across the autobiography of Sir Francis Chichester in the local library. Spotted quite by chance but picked up, in part anyway, because of our visit to his ancestral hall in North Devon (see August 26th). At least I think he is a junior twig on the family tree concerned. Hitherto, I have vaguely thought of him as being a yachtsman who took one trip too many and had to be winched off, more or less to die.
But having read his book he now strikes me as a much more substantial person - although quite possibly a hard person to be around for any length of time. So he goes off to New Zealand as a young man with hardly a bean after the first world war and makes a lot of money. He then goes back to England, gets a bee in his bonnet about flying and decides to fly back to Australia single handed, something which had been done just once or twice before. This takes a couple of months or so. Lots of opportunities for getting lost, forced landings in the middle of nowhere, robbery with or without violence. Very tired for a lot of the time. Sometimes hard to stay awake in the air. Lots of repairs needed along the way, repairs requiring a good range of engineering and carpentry skills. Not to mention band-aid patches on the thin fabric which covered the wings. At one point, just having survived yet another brush with death, he just gets out a cigar, puffs up, pours himself a large brandy and flies along as happy as can be.
On arrival, takes himself and plane to New Zealand on a boat and then wants to fly back to England, starting with a flight across the Tasman Sea to Australia, maybe half as far as going across the North Atlantic and three times as far as his plane, now converted to a seaplane by the adding of floats, can fly on one tank. But all is not lost. He spots a couple of small islands, one at the one third and the other at the two thirds mark. The only catch being that they are quite small islands, quite easy to miss - with missing being almost certainly fatal. But he gets himself a sextant and works out some tricky way of reducing the risk of missing - the catch being that one has to take the sights (having waited for the sun to come out) and do the complicated sounding calculations with one hand while flying the plane with the other. I had always been rather impressed that Captain Scott & Co. could keep up this sort of thing while dying of cold, but this sounds even harder. But this one managed.
On from Australia up through the East Indies etc, crashing while doing an exhibition flight in Japan. A crash into wires stretched between two mountain peaks which no-one had thought to tell him about and which were more or less invisible from the air. Reduced to taking the steamer home.
Back in England, he spent most of the war years teaching navigation in the RAF, rather miffed that he was not allowed a navigator wing on his tunic as he wore spectacles. This meant that he had little cred. in fly-boy bars, which he thought was rather unfair, all things considered. Then back to making money, starting with navigation board games, then jigsaw maps, then paper maps, then the Chichester Guide to London to which we were introduced by a helpful City of London policeman in the late seventies. Very good little guide it was too, much better than an AZ for central London, but sadly it does not appear to exist any more. At least not in Amazon, which knows all about it but has not got one.
He then takes up yachting and, without too much relevant experience, joins the single handed race across the Atlantic, which he wins in 40 days or so. But 40 days without much sleep and with much wrestling with a boat which sounds much too big for handling single handed. Chances of being brained by the main boom or speared by the spinnaker pole much too high. Not to mention sails being carried away, monstrous seas & winds, the possibility of icebergs and a brand new automatic steering gadget (developed from models on the round pond in the Kensington Gardens) needing plenty of running repairs to keep it on automatic.
Still game, a couple of years later he has another go, this time racing against the clock rather than against other yachts, and manages to clip a few days off his previous time. Arriving on Independence Day, which earned him a nice telegram from President Kennedy.
It seems that part of the attraction is that, away from people, one starts to experience a strange & exhilarating oneness with one's boat and with the sea. A very bubble full thing, entirely appropriate for the era of flower people and LSD!
# posted by Jim @ 4:32 AM 
