Firstly, apologies for using the Evening Standard's approach to news-stand advertising - i.e. use a headline to entice readers, that is openly misleading and which has little to do with the real "story".
The headline refers to Adam Potter who thought “This is going to hurt,” as he fell off the side of a Scottish mountain on Saturday afternoon.
The climber, who dumbfounded rescuers by being both alive and able to stand up after falling 1,000 feet off the Highlands peak, told yesterday of the moment he realised that it was rather a long way down the mountainside.
There is very little similarity between Mr Potter's fall and mine on Saturday morning, for whilst Adam fell 1,000ft, I slipped less than 1ft before falling on my backside and wrist, with little to show for it other than a severely bruised thumb!
However, the point of this story actually has nothing to do with my injury per se, although it does have something to do with accidents in general.
What actually prompted this blog was the news that New York City is proposing to ban the use of electronic devices whilst crossing roads! This is in partial response to stories such as that of 15-year-old Alexa Longueira who was walking in Staten Island, New York, texting on her phone when she fell into an open manhole, receiving minor injuries (Reports that she was saved from serious injury by a group of Mutant Ninja Turtles are, I believe, unsubstantiated).
Last week, I also reported on the woman who whilst texting fell into a shopping mall fountain.
Now there is only one eventual outcome to such events, and that involves those individuals who we lovingly know as 'Health & Safety officials".
The natural extension of these actually true stories, is that any activity that involves doing more than one thing at once, will no doubt ultimately be declared too dangerous and therefore carry an immediate ban!
For those of you who think that there may be some sense in this I should make clear that "breathing" will be counted as the first activity, and therefore we will be stopped from doing absolutely everything!
Whilst some wish to excuse Miss Longueira's apparent stupidity by claiming that there were a lack of warning signs around the open manhole, many observers almost completely blame her for not seeing it and for being completely detached from her surroundings.
As far as I'm concerned, there is in fact plenty of statistical evidence to suggest that even if there had been a number of yellow, plastic hazard signs in front of the manhole, all that would have happened would have been that Miss Longueira would have tripped over these first before falling headlong into the manhole!
And so, with all form of movement about to be banned on health and safety grounds, it is only a matter of time before all Trailwalker events around the world are cancelled. Walking, talking, eating, map-reading atop steep slopes, along rough tracks, in the dark and in (potentially) high winds will be declared more hazardous than free-fall sky-diving without a parachute!
So to cut a very long story short, 2011 may be the very last year to take part in this great challenge and raise vast sums for charity...so let's make the most of it.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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