Drained Of Life - Almost

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

The last couple of blog post have concerned people featured in the Darwin Awards, “Never Hitch Your Wagon” about someone who wasn’t eligible because he survived his and his wife’s stupidity, and “Little Dumb And Large Dumber” because their dumbness did make them successful Darwin Award winners.

I had a friend who almost featured in the Darwin Awards too. The only reason he didn’t was because they didn’t exist in those days and probably none of us would have had the presence of mind to nominate him anyway.

I won’t tell you his real name, have to expose the innocent and protect the guilty and all that, but his nickname was “Goners” pronounced “Gone-ers”. It was a nickname he gained after the incident I am now going to tell you about, and for most of his friends he’s still stuck with it to this day.

It happened when we were all young guys, in our teens and spending a leisurely summer messing around and generally enjoying life the way you can before you get older and wiser and burden yourself with responsibilities and debt and so forth. Then the Dads were paying the mortgage and bringing home the bacon (sometimes literally) and we were carefree and happy.

This day we decided to go for a walk along a nearby river. None of us were keen fishermen but we liked the river and walks along the riverbanks and the little stony beaches that the river’s meanders had left here and there. That particular summer was hot and a bit of bathing in the cool clear unpolluted water was also on the agenda.

It wasn’t a big river, no Amazon that’s for sure. Just about 50 feet across, or thereabouts, and maybe four or five feet deep towards the middle. There were a few deeper holes that serious fishermen tended to use, but we were always content messing around in the shallower water. It was fun and safe. In fact thinking and writing about it, I wish I was back there right now.

But I’m not, so on with the story.

Part of the river bank was relatively flat with only a slightly sloping bank down to the water. Other parts were a straight drop. And yet others consisted of a fairly steep slope down to the water’s edge.  

Local farmers had dug drains at intervals to let rainwater run off their fields into the river, and between where the man-made drains ended and the river began, the water flow had over the years dug its own ‘V’ and then ‘U’ type trenches by eroding the top soil.

These had to be negotiated when one was walking along the riverbank, but it wasn’t a problem. That was how things were and everybody just accepted it and got on with it. I’m sure nowadays there would be a bureaucratic do-gooding group wanting all sorts of rules and regulations both to disrupt the farmer’s lives and to spoil the nature walk for the rest of us. In those days some interfering busybody was more likely to end up in the river and they knew it so they stayed away.

Of course, when I said the drains weren’t a problem, what I meant was they weren’t a problem for most of the people most of the time. But there’s always one idiot who will find a way to mess up even a nice summer’s day stroll along the riverbank.

Enter “Goners” into the story.

Although the day I am recounting was idyllic weather wise, during the previous night there had been a thunderstorm and some furious rain for a little while. The result of that was that the following morning there was considerable run-off of rainwater from the fields, via the farmer’s drains into the river. This made the areas close to the drains a little wet and slippery, not to mention mucky.

We had been walking for a few miles, successfully crossing all the open drains we had encountered. And then it happened!

“Goners” tripped or lost is concentration or something, but his balance went and he headed over the side of the riverbank.

At first this caused unbridled hilarity amongst the rest of us. We were laughing and pointing and cheering. If we had had pens and paper with us, no doubt we would have held up makeshift score cards critiquing the ‘dive’. But we hadn’t so we just laughed and laughed, not only at the dive but at the frantic wriggling and gurgling of “Goners” in the trench.   

Then somebody twigged on what was happening and said, “OMG I think he’s drowning!”

“How can you drown in three inches of water?”, came a chorus of incredulous replies.  

But he was.

“Goners” was in BIG trouble.

He WAS actually drowning in probably less then three inches of water.

“Goners” had fallen into the drain nature had made with the water erosion. Obviously he didn’t intend to, and, unprepared, he fell head first, with his arms by his sides, as opposed to being in a normal diving position with his arms outstretched in front of him and slightly raised.

As he had slid down the riverbank towards the water he had embedded himself farther and farther into the drain, trapping his arms by his side.

And when he reached the water, which was indeed barely three inches deep at the edge, his face including his nose and mouth were submerged under the level of the water.

The frantic wriggling wasn’t just to try to free his arms, but to try to get his mouth and nose out of the water to grab some much needed air. And he clearly wasn’t having much success.  

Once we realized that he was in real trouble, of course it was all hands on deck so to speak and everyone rushed to his assistance. Two of us each grabbed one of his feet and pulled him back up the bank a little so that his head came out of the water. Much to his relief, and ours, “Goners” made a few huge grabs for air and the crisis seemed to be over.

Now I don’t know to this day whether what happened next was a deliberate act, something sub-conscious, or just another minor accident, but with his movement and gasping for air his feet, which like the rest of him were slippery with the muck from the drain, managed to slip out of our hands and he slid back into the water again. Gurgle, gurgle, wriggle, splutter, gurgle….

We knew he was in no danger this time and yes, we did laugh again. It was funny for everyone but “Goners”. Some of us – not me you understand, no definitely not me, of course not, don’t be silly, how could you think such a thing – could have played that game all day, pulling him out of the river and then letting him slide back in. Thinking about it now, we probably invented a new water-boarding technique, to us at the time it was just fun.

But we must have thought better of it after a couple of ‘dunks’ because the we pulled “Goners” out of the drain completely and back up on to dry land.

When he got his wits about him once again he said, “Thanks guys. I was nearly a goner.”

And that was his nickname for ever more, “Goners”.

It shows you just how easily and innocently things can happen that under different circumstances would have had a lot more tragic results.

Postscript:

Strangely enough, many years later, in the very same river as it happens, a guy called Willy (the same as featured in my blog post “Willy And Woof”) did the very same thing while walking back home from a bar, very, very drunk. That time however there was no one around to help.

Now he could have been a Darwin Award winner!

  

The Great Escape

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I won’t tell you exactly how I know about this story, let’s just say it was recounted in great detail by a very good friend of mine who, whilst he wasn’t part of this particular adventure, was also the unwilling recipient of Saddam Hussein’s hospitality for a while back before the first Gulf War in 1990. My thanks to him.

Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 the United States, Britain, and their allies decided they would have to help out the Kuwaitis (it’s like they had oil or something, eh?) and they started to make very public plans to liberate that country. This would obviously involve attacks on Iraqi troops and on Iraq itself.

Saddam Hussein thought a good way to dissuade any bombing campaign against his country was to use American, British and European citizens who had been working in Iraq, as a ‘human shield’ against the bombs. Highly illegal and breaching the Geneva Convention and all that, but it was Saddam Hussein and what did he care about rules.

The workers were duly rounded up by Saddam’s men and either put under house arrest or confined in small compounds. They weren’t mistreated and had a limited amount of freedom, but still in the back of their minds they feared they were about to be used for real as that human shield and they knew that when the war started in earnest the bombing would be a necessary part of it. 

Most of the ‘hostages’ sat tight in the hope that diplomatic negotiations would succeed and they would be released, which in fact is what did happen.

But a few intrepid souls, who worked for a construction company, decided that they would mount an escape and head for the border. Maybe they had been watching a DVD of The Great Escape or something the night before, I don’t know.

They gathered up supplies of food and as much water as they could carry and in the dead of night they set off. It was relatively easy for them to get out of the hostage compound because the Iraqis knew that no one in their right mind would try to escape. The only thing outside Bagdad was desert, and lots of it.

In what passed for a plan, the would-be escapees had figured that their best bet would be to head for Jordan. Syria was deemed to be too unfriendly and would probably shoot them or send them back to Iraq. The border to the north was far too far away and the terrain was harsh. And the border between Iraq and Iran they reckoned could well be mined because of the war that had just ended less than two years previously between the two states.

So west it was, a long journey, but they set off in good spirits and their confidence level high.

Because of the heat during the day they had decided they would make the best progress if they walked by night and rested by day. A sensible enough strategy. And so it was. Night after night after night they walked and in the daytime found a place to shelter and rested as best they could. They also made very sure that they rationed their meager supplies of food and especially water.

Although none of them really knew what they were talking about, they figured that it would take a week to ten days to make it to the border. But what they had not figured out was that travelling by night is a very different proposition to the daytime.

Still, on and on they went until almost a week had gone by. Their supplies were dwindling fast, but they were still okay for a few more days at least. Then, on the eighth night, they had a remarkable stroke of luck. They came to a high wire fence. They had made it to the Iraq/Jordan border AND they had done it a couple of days quicker than estimated.

They were jubilant.

After congratulating each other all over the place, slapping backs and so forth, they set about digging their way under the fence. They hadn’t any tools with them, but it wasn’t a hard job and after twenty minutes or so they had cleared enough debris to allow them to slide underneath the wire, one at a time, and cross over into Jordanian territory.

When they had crossed the fence there were more celebrations. Then they rested for a little while, but not long. They were safe now, but the adrenalin boost caused by making it safely into Jordan was pulsing through their veins and they all agreed that they should press on and sooner or later they would encounter Jordanian border guards or make it to a village. Either way they could replenish their supplies and get a much needed clean up.

Sure enough, less than an hour or so later, as it was getting light they spotted an army jeep in the distance. They started waving and shouting and eventually the soldiers in the jeep spotted them and made their way over to where they were. A soldier, whom they supposed was the officer in charge got out of the jeep and walked over to them.

The leader of the escape gang, who spoke a little Arabic, welcomed the soldier, and as best he could explained that they were hostages and had just escaped across the border after several hard days and nights travelling through the desert.

The soldier grinned and then started to laugh. He said something to his comrades and they too began to laugh. The intrepid escapees joined in, not at all sure what they were laughing at, but assuming the Jordanian soldiers were happy that someone had pulled a fast one over the Iraqis.

Everyone was so happy.

The Jordanian commander told one of his men to send a radio message and a few moments later another jeep and a small canvas topped lorry arrived. The soldiers indicated that the six escapees should get into the back of the lorry, which they duly did and sat down three on each side on the small bench. Two of the soldiers got in along with them.  

And off they went. They drove for about ten minutes and then made it to a hard surfaced road. About another ten or fifteen minutes after that the escapees started to notice buildings. They had never seen a Jordanian village, but they assumed this was what they looked like. Then a short time later the lorry stopped.

The two soldiers jumped out first and indicated that the escapees should follow, which they did. But when they were on the ground and had gathered their wits about them they saw that there were a lot of people around, but they were all in uniform. There didn’t seem to be any civilians around at all.

Maybe they had been evacuated because of the imminent hostilities? They couldn’t really figure it out.

But then the penny slowly started to drop into place.

Our intrepid escapees had not made it across the border.

Nor were they in a Jordanian village.

What they had managed to do was march for days through the desert, probably in all directions but a straight line, and ended up still in Iraq.

Not only that but the fence they had encountered and carefully dug their way under wasn’t the border fence between Iraq and Jordan, it was the fence surrounding an Iraqi army camp. And that’s where they now were! These soldiers were Saddam’s troops, not Jordanians.

I really wish I could have seen the look of disbelief, confusion, disappointment and incredulity on their faces.

The Iraqis could have shot them. But they were so busy laughing they would probably have missed. Instead, after the hilarity had passed, they allowed the escapees to get cleaned up, probably more for soldiers’ benefit rather than the escapees, and then put them on another lorry to be driven back to Baghdad.

The great escape was over.

http://youtu.be/xkwmIDx9RwQ

Have you had similar experiences? Send them along. Let the world know what is happening before it is too late.

Successful Outcome - Victim Dead!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Then there was the case of Alison Hume, a 44 year old mother who had fallen 45 feet down an abandoned mine shaft, part of a coal mine that closed in 1926. It happened at 11.30pm while she had been taking a shortcut home across a field near Galston in Ayrshire, Scotland after visiting friends in July 2008.

She was found by her teenage daughter. Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service were called and when they arrived fireman Alexander Dunn was lowered to the bottom of the shaft. Mrs Hume was still conscious but had a collapsed lung, several broken ribs and a broken sternum.

A paramedic was strapped up in a harness ready to follow to give emergency medical aid.

However, before the paramedic could render assistance, group commander Paul Stewart arrived as a “media relations officer”. He assumed command after realising he was the most senior officer there. (Know the type? A moron, with no common sense, in a job he is not capable of doing.)

Stewart’s first move was to stop the paramedic from being lowered down the mine shaft. He also  refused to allow colleagues to rescue Mrs Hume using ropes because (you’ve heard this one before) “they had not received the correct training”.

Mr Stewart feared they could be sued if the mission failed – in other words, this cretin cared much more about keeping his job than he did about doing his job and saving Mrs Hume, a member of the public who it was his duty as part of the emergency services to help.

Incredibly – or maybe not – this moron Stewart later told a fatal accident inquiry that the operation had a “successful outcome” because the casualty was ultimately removed from the shaft. Mrs Hume was lifted out but died shortly afterwards from a heart attack brought on by hypothermia.

Also incredibly – or again maybe not – instead of being fired (unfortunately you cannot be jailed even for this degree of stupidity), moron Stewart is still with Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service and is actually on the waiting list for promotion to divisional commander! 

In the fatal inquiry report Sheriff Desmond Leslie said Mrs Hume might have survived if she had been removed sooner, and that Mr Stewart and colleague William Thomson were “focused on self-justification for the action or non-action taken by them” and did not reflect on lessons that could be learned from the tragedy. The sheriff added: “I found their evidence bullish, if not arrogant.”

When you put morons in positions of responsibility for which they are clearly not fit, you will invariably get decisions that use regulations as excuse for failure, rather than a reason for success.

Of course, morons like Stewart couldn’t hide behind stupid rules if the bureaucrats didn’t make the stupid rules in the first place. Former watch commander John Bowman – who had been ordered to rewrite the rule book on rope rescues weeks before the tragedy – said as much when he spoke out against his former employers. Mr Bowman had warned bosses that changing the rules to prevent firemen using ropes to rescue people was “a disaster waiting to happen”.

He said: ‘Many incidents you go to in the brigade don’t end with a successful resolution. Sometimes the person can be dead before you get there, sometimes you just can’t help people. This was not the case for Mrs Hume. It’s not the fire service’s finest hour.’

You can say that again!

But sadly a moron like Stewart will never realize it!!

Have you had similar experiences? Send them along. Let the world know what is happening before it is too late.

Lost In The Fog

"Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy"

Tommy was just an ordinary bloke. When I got to know him he was getting on in years, in his late seventies I would guess. He was a nice man, very amiable, very kind and great chat. In fact that’s what Tommy liked to do best – chat. He could tell stories all night long.

Tommy was of a generation past who, like my dad, was brought up spending their evenings visiting their friends and having social interaction that did not involve computers, iphones, blackberries, laptops, skype, msn, goggle+, twitter, myface and spacebook or whatever they’re called. You know, all the paraphernalia that we don’t seem able to do without these days. Or maybe better, have become obsessed with these days.

He had been born in the countryside, on a small farm. Too small in fact to sustain the family economically, so when Tommy was of an age he was sent out to find work elsewhere, and elsewhere of course meant the city. Tommy did get himself a job, and a wife and a family and he spent the next forty years or so living in the city suburbs.

He was content enough with his life and so he should have been. He was never out of work, and raised a nice family, two boys and a girl who all of whom did well for themselves. Eventually they all got married and moved away to their own homes and a few years after that Tommy retired. That’s when he got the urge to return to the countryside where he had been born and raised.

So it was that Tommy and his wife bought a small-holding of a few acres in the countryside, quite close to where an uncle of mine lived at the time. Tommy and he were of a similar vintage and they quickly became friends, visiting each other’s houses frequently. Sometimes the get togethers were a bit more formal and the wives came along too. Other times Tommy would just wander across the fields on his own to visit and have a chat with my uncle. There were only three smallish fields between the two houses, whereas the trip via the road would have been at least five times the distance.

This routine went on for several years without noteworthy incident. Then one evening in late autumn Tommy wandered across the fields to talk to my uncle. Nothing unusual in that. They chatted away for several hours, probably had a few beers or a shot of whiskey, which they were both known to frequent, though not abuse.

When it was Tommy’s time to go home the fun started. He put on his jacket and hat and my uncle conveyed him to the back door, which he habitually used. It was more or less in a direct line to his own house. As Tommy was leaving it was getting fairly dark. There was no moonlight to speak of and a fog had started coming down.

I should point out here to people reading this who have never lived in the countryside that at night it is dark, I mean, DARK, very! In cities and towns and their suburbs there is usually street lighting and also an ambient glow that helps to keep real darkness away. In the countryside nothing but the odd light at someone’s house a long, long way off.

As Tommy was leaving my uncle’s house visibility was about ten yards ahead, and he had little trouble in getting to the first field gate and starting his journey back to his own house. He went on more or less on automatic pilot, he had done the journey so many times, and he made it into the second field without difficulty. But all the time he had been walking the fog had been descending and thickening. Now visibility was almost zero, and it was completely dark as well.

After you are out in the dark for a while your eyes adjust. That’s why soldiers and paratroopers and sailors use a red light before they venture out, to allow their night vision to kick in. But fog has a different and very disorienting effect if you aren’t used to it and we weren’t used to it, it maybe happened on this scale once a year, if that.

So there Tommy was in the middle of the second field, in the dark, with the fog, and he was completely lost. Completely!

He kept walking, and walking, and walking, and walking but he never made it to the edge of the field. If he had managed that he could have followed the hedge and fence until he got to a gate. But he never got to the hedge.

All he managed to make contact with that evening were stacks of hay bales that were set up in the field here and there, first to dry a little and then to be collected and brought into the barn.

It’s hard to say how many miles Tommy walked that night, but it could have been at least five, probably more. He was at it for hours. Walk….BUMFFF, into a stack of bales. Walk….BUMFFF, into another stack of bales. Walk….BUMFFF. Walk….BUMFFF. Walk….BUMFFF.

Eventually, fatigued, bewildered, and now frightened he would never see home again, he sat down at the next bunch of hay bales he walked into, pulled a few of them around him and fell asleep.

It was now after midnight and Tommy’s wife was getting anxious that he return home. It wasn’t unusual for him to be late getting back to his own house, once the two old fellas started to chat they could go at it for ages. But this was getting late even for him. My uncle told her that he had left shortly after nine o’clock. It was now approaching 1 am, and they both became alarmed, fearing the worst, that Tommy had become unwell on his walk back to the house.

By this time my uncle was in bed, but up he got, dressed, got himself a torch and away he went outside to look for Tommy. In the intervening three hours or so the fog hadn’t quite disappeared, but it had retreated substantially and visibility with the torch wasn’t too bad. My uncle got his dog, a collie who was delighted at the chance for a night stroll, and they both set off into the first field.

No sign of Tommy. My uncle shouted and shouted, but no response. He walked round the edge of the field, just to make sure Tommy hadn’t fallen into any of the ditches and maybe broken a leg. No, no Tommy.

Then into the next field. My uncle and the dog were just about to start the same process of walking round the periphery of the field again, but before they started he shone his torch in a sweeping motion across the field from right to left. He noticed one stack of hay bales knocked over. He moved his light a little more. Another stack of hay bales on the ground. Then another and another.

“What the hell?” he said to himself, as he surveyed the devastation.

You see, out of something like twenty-three stacks of hay bales, Tommy had managed to blunder into nineteen of them and knock them down. After every one he walked into he must have set off in a completely new direction, like a veritable pin ball he just ricocheted off one lot and meandered on until he hit another and so forth. I have known people with little sense of direction but this was just ridiculous!

They found Tommy a little while later. Well, the dog did first and then my uncle picked out the boots and lower parts of Tommy’s legs sticking out from below some of the upturned hay bales. He got him gathered up and conveyed him back to his own house. 

Tommy never did live that journey down. 

And he never did venture out in the fog again.

Have you had similar experiences? Send them along. Let the world know what is happening before it is too late.

El Caminito del Rey

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”



Occasionally you get something really stupid that you just have to admire. The guy doing the video linked below is one of them.

First, here’s what it’s all about….



El Caminito del Rey (English: The King’s little pathway) is a walkway, now fallen into disrepair, pinned along the steep walls of a narrow gorge in El Chorro, near Álora in the province of Málaga, Spain. The name is often shortened to Camino del Rey (English: King’s pathway).

In was originally constructed in 1901 for workers who needed to cross between the hydroelectric power plants at Chorro Falls and Gaitanejo Falls, to transport materials, and for inspection and maintenance. Construction of the walkway took four years and it was finished in 1905.

In 1921 King Alfonso XIII crossed the walkway for the inauguration of the dam Conde del Guadalhorce and it became known by its present name.

The walkway is one metre (3 feet and 3 inches) in width, and rises over 100 metres (350 feet) above the river below. Constructed of concrete resting on steel rails supported by stanchions at around 45 degrees into the rock face.

It is currently in a highly deteriorated state and there are numerous sections where part or all of the concrete top has collapsed. The result is large open air gaps that are bridged only by narrow steel beams or other support fixtures.

Very few of the original handrails exist but a safety-wire runs the length of the path. Several people have lost their lives on the walkway in recent years and after two fatal accidents in 1999 and 2000, the local government closed both entrances, but not the gift shop.

In June 2011, the regional government of Andalusia and the local government of Málaga agreed to share costs of restoration (including car parking and a museum) of €9 million. The project will take approximately three years to complete. Many of the original features will remain in place and the new materials that are used will be in keeping with the old design

I think I’ll wait until it’s fixed before I start thinking about having a go. In the meantime if you want to see something daringly stupid watch the video. They guy who took it is a lot surer footed (and braver) than I am, I can tell you that!